Lightning Over Elk River
by Minisinoo
Summary: Storm and Cyclops are sent by Professor X to recover a potential new recruit: Dani Elk River. Action & character development, oodles of pathos. Discussion of ADULT topics, including sex and drugs. Drugs are not glorified. 40,000 words
1. Road Trip (Ororo)

I'm still trying to figure out who's getting punished here: me or Cyclops. Maybe both of us. Xavier does like to kill two birds with one stone. So ol' Fearless Leader is on probation after haring off to the Savage Land to join Magneto for a while. (I gotta admire him for filching the Blackbird right out from under the prof's nose, though.) And I'm in the doghouse for sneaking out two nights ago to go clubbing alone - but it was worth it, to dance until the sun came up, feel the music undulate through my body in time to the strobe lights on the floor. I still don't get why Xavier threw a hissy fit when I came back. I hadn't been drunk or stoned, and it's safe to be out now, isn't it? In a club, who looks twice at the black girl with white hair?

But Xavier has his damn rules, and I broke them, and earlier, Scott had defied him to run off to his arch-enemy. So what if he came back and apologized, and Xavier pretended everything was peachy-keen? We all knew Cyclops was on probation. So here we were, stuck with each other in the same vehicle all the way to Nashville, Tennessee.

Like who the hell wants to go to Nashville?

"I need to take a bathroom break," I said. Cyclops was driving. "And no stupid wise-cracks about bladders the size of a pea."

"I wasn't going to say anything." But his lips had quirked up. "I'll keep an eye out for the next rest area. I need coffee anyway."

"I could drive for a while, y'know, if you're getting tired."

"I'm not getting tired. I just need some coffee."

Right. He didn't want to give up the wheel, was the truth. Friggin' control freak.

Hating the heavy traffic of coastal Interstate 95, Scott had taken I-87 west to I-81, since we'd have to be on that road eventually anyway. The interstate had run south through pretty green Pennsylvania hills to the capitol of Harrisburg, busy with traffic from families who, here on the crest of spring, were out for their first holiday of the season: a plague of vans and SUVs and squealing children in fast food restaurants. Once at a distance down an access road, I'd seen an Amish family in an old-fashioned horse-drawn buggy, and Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs had adorned some barns. A little before noon, we'd crossed a finger of Maryland just west of Hagerstown, and less than an hour later, had leapt eastern West Virginia, into Virginia itself.

Scott had passed the Virginia welcome station without a second glance, and now, when a quick consult of the map revealed that the next rest stop wasn't for another forty miles down the road, I made him take a regular exit before my bladder exploded. It looked ready to rain, the sky heavy grey over the growing hill line to our west. There were four gas stations here, and a choice between McDonalds or Hardees; he chose the orange and blue without even asking if I'd rather go to the arches. Not that I really cared which restaurant, but it pissed me off that he hadn't at least consulted me. "Maybe I wanted a Happy Meal," I said as he turned off the engine.

He just glanced over. "Looking for a toy to distract you from my company?"

I laughed because I hadn't expected that. He can be funny sometimes. We both got out and stretched. God, I hate riding. Driving is okay, but riding is a pain in the ass. Nothing to do but stare at miles and miles of concrete and hardwood forests and shiny little metal boxes that ate fossil fuel and spat back carbon monoxide. Ol' Cyclops isn't exactly a charming conversation partner. At least he has decent taste in music. There haven't been many wars over the CD player.

I made a dash for the little girl's room, but had to wait in line behind a family any of whom could have modeled for Wal-Mart Big Woman clothing. There was a grandmother, her two daughters and their kids in fabric-painted t-shirts of faded lilac or yellow. The grandmother had permed hair that looked as if she'd rolled it, slept on it, took out the curlers, and then hadn't bothered to _brush_ it. It was dyed a shade somewhere between burnt orange and maple-leaf pink. She turned to stare at my navel-bare midriff with dim-witted envy, while her daughters gossiped about the trouble of toilet training their snot-nosed brats - the same ones crawling unchecked in and out under bathroom stall doors. By all that's holy, give me a hysterectomy right now.

When they were finally done, I had my turn, and from inside the stall, could hear the last of them: a mother washing her preschool-aged son's hands at the sink. "Why's that nigger woman got white hair, Mama?" the kid asked. His accent was from the deeper South than Virginia.

"Shhh, Rory," the mother said, then in a whisper which didn't conceal a damn thing, "I think she's a mutie, honey. You stay away from them people, y'hear?" The water shut off and there was the whoosh of a door opening and closing.

Great. Racism and anti-mutant sentiment all rolled up in one fat package. So much for anything we'd accomplished in Washington last week. The public still hates us.

By the time I emerged, Cyclops was looking edgy, standing by the door up against the window with a cup of coffee and a small bag in one hand, and the other hand shoved deep in the pocket of his black jeans. With the exception of a few khakis, I don't think the man owns a stitch that isn't some shade of black or grey. He glared indiscriminately at everyone for no good reason. "Hey, Jolly Charlie," I said as I approached.

"Man, what took you so long?"

"Little girls can't just unzip, point, and shoot. I had to wait on the Polyester Convention," and I jerked my chin towards the family with whom I'd shared the bathroom.

"Ah," he mouthed without a sound, biting back a grin as he opened the door for me. Always the gentleman.

We paced side by side to the car. "They still hate us, Scott. Whatever Xavier wants to think, they hate us."

He pondered that as he unlocked the Mercedes' door on the driver's side. "It'll take time," he replied as he clicked the lock release so I could get in.

"And Rome wasn't conquered in a day," I said as I slid into my seat. "I know."

"It's 'Rome wasn't _built_ in a day.'" He grinned and started the car.

"Shit! Do you have to correct _every_ little mistake, _all_ the friggin' time?" I hadn't meant to say that, but I still felt raw from the 'nigger mutie' crack, and I confess, his perfectionism drives me crazy. "I'd think being Poster Child for the Mutant Polly Anna Society would get old."

He didn't reply for some minutes, just turned over the engine with a vengeance, and squealed the tires leaving the parking lot. When we were back on the road, he opened his bag and fished out a hamburger, then said simply, "Fuck you," before taking a bite.

"Well, will wonders never cease? There's actually a guy to piss off inside the Fearless Leader."

More silence. One hand was gripping the wheel while he ate in silence, a whole burger in a just a few bites, but then I've seen him put away three Big Macs without trying. And I was beginning to rethink the wisdom of opening this can of worms anyway. We had two days alone together in a car before we got to Nashville, and if the Mystery Mutant wouldn't come back with us, we'd have to face the return trip with just each other for company, too. "Y'know," he said finally, "my job is not to make you like me. I don't give a shit one way or the other. My job is to keep you from getting killed in a combat situation. So think whatever the hell you want to about me, as long as you do what I say when it comes to crunch time."

That sounded so tough, so controlled, so hard-assed leader-ish. His glasses made it impossible for me to read his eyes, but his knuckles were still clenched on the steering wheel and his lips were thin. Whatever he said, I think he might like to have a friend, especially now that Little Miss Perky had hopped into bed with the Wolverine. He's out of confidants, unless you count the professor. He and Jean Grey have barely spoken ten words to each other since he came back.

And God, is she an idiot, or what? I know the stink of a wild animal when I smell it, and Logan is a wild animal. I have a hard time feeling sorry that he screwed her over and then took off into the sunset. I might feel sorrier for Cyclops at being passed over, if he wasn't so damn determined to make himself _annoying_.

He reached across to turn up the CD player, so we didn't have to talk. It's my CD. _Under the Pink:_ old Tori Amos before her lyrics turned completely surreal.

 _"Baker, Baker baking a cake, make me a day, make me whole again and I wonder what's in a day what's in your cake this time / I guess you heard he's gone to LA; he says that behind my eyes I'm hiding and he tells me I pushed him away, that my heart's been hard to find / here, there must be something here, there must be something here, here . . . ."_

Outside, it had started to rain finally, and I didn't think it was me, but I was suddenly feeling as sad as the weather. The windshield wipers slapped out a blues beat.

"Do you know why the professor sent _us_?" I asked Cyclops, because I really didn't want to go the rest of the trip with this electric tension between us like the atmosphere before lightning strikes.

I think he understood my question for an apology because he answered levelly - no trace of bitterness - "How much did he brief you?"

"There was supposed to be a brief? It was more like, 'Storm, pack your gear, you're going to Nashville with Cyclops.'"

Almost against his will, Scott smiled. It was terse, tense, but still a smile. Does smiling really hurt so much, Cyclops Leader Man?

"All right," he said, "the scoop is this: Cerebro picked up a very powerful mutant signature somewhere around Nashville. The girl's been on the move south from Chicago for the past week or so."

"Will she still be in Nashville by the time we get there?"

"I don't know. The professor will contact us if she isn't. Her movements haven't been rapid, but they have been consistent over the past few weeks, south down I-65."

"So what else do we know about her besides that she's a girl?"

"Her powers are psionic. She manifests people's fears and hopes - so strongly that they can kill. She literally scares people to death."

"So tell me, _why_ did the professor send us instead of Jean-Ms-Recruitment-Officer, who also happens to be the _telepath_?"

He seemed suddenly uncomfortable, but whether at my question or my mention of Jean, I wasn't sure. "I think it has to do with things the professor sensed about her. She might talk to us more readily than to Jean."

"Oh, really? And why's that?"

He clearly didn't want to answer. "Wait," I said, "don't tell me. I'm here because she's black, right? I'm your token minority."

He sighed. "You're a token nothing. And she's not black. But she's not white, either."

"Like I said, I'm the token minority. But what's your excuse?"

"Ororo, drop it."

So I did. Yet I still couldn't figure his inclusion on this mission if it wasn't for punishment. I was here because we were going to talk to a woman of color, and much as I hated to admit it, it did make sense to send me instead of Jean, the white, middle-class darling daughter of privilege.

But why Cyclops? I was sure he'd been sent along as more than chauffeur. And although I might like to chalk it up to an elaborate punishment from Xavier, there had to be more to it than that. Xavier could have found something better if he didn't have an ulterior motive for sending Cyclops to Tennessee.

We drove for two hours without saying much of anything. I dozed at some point and woke to find the rain over and the surrounding country gone from high hills to real mountains raising backs into the clouds like great, green humpback whales breaking foam.

"We're just north of Roanoke," he told me, when he saw me stir.

"I love the Blue Ridge," I murmured, more to say something than because I really felt compelled to share that information with him.

But unexpectedly, he replied, "So do I. Or really, I like any mountains. Have you ever seen the Rockies? They're amazing."

Wow. A talkative Cyclops. About something that wasn't business. "I've seen the Rockies, but I still like these better. They're greener."

He tilted his head and thought about that. "You like green things." It wasn't really a question. He's watched me garden. Not long after I'd first arrived at the mansion, I'd taken over care of the arboreum, even started a few plots outside. It had been the first time in a long while that I'd stayed in one place long enough to get my hands in the dirt. When I was working outside, Scott would sometimes watch from his spot in the hammock under a pair of small maples. He'd take a newspaper out there, or the current issue of _The Nation_ , and read, or nap. He never said much, but sometimes I'd felt his eyes on me. I think he liked being outside as much as I did, enjoyed the sound of bird and cricket, the wind in the trees, so unlike the hot noise of summer mean streets with their honking traffic, loud radios, and angry mothers screaming at children. It was peaceful here, and if there was any reason I'd stayed at Xavier's, it was for that peace. I was learning what a woodpecker sounded like, and the hoot of a whippoorwill; I was learning how to catch fireflies in the early evening, how a mist rose up off fields after a hard rain if the evening was cool enough, and how the water of a brook felt over my bare toes as I balanced my way over the rocks of a creek bed. Xavier's was heaven to Bobby because he wasn't running anymore and had as much PB&J as he wanted to eat; it was heaven to Peter because he didn't have to hide - either his mutant ability or his artistic streak; and it was heaven to Hank because he had free rein to poke around with state-of-the-art technology. But it was heaven to me because I could play in the dirt, court the mansion cats, and put a hummingbird feeder outside my attic window over a box of enticing flowers - and actually hope to see a hummingbird.

I wondered sometimes why Xavier's was heaven to Scott. He's a hard man to figure out, but you don't have to be Sigmund Freud to see he's not comfortable in social situations, even 'social situations' that are just a handful of peers and teammates. A bit schizoid, that. When he's in uniform, he orders us all around as if he were Patton reincarnated, but take him out of uniform and he slinks off into the background and never says much - or hides out in the hammock under the maples. The hammock is his personal retreat, and the rest of us steer clear. In fact, the only time I've seen Scott act aggressively outside training was over that hammock. Bobby found it on his second day at Xavier's and made himself right at home. When Scott had discovered him in it, he'd politely asked Bobby to give it over. Bobby's reply had been a smart aleck, "Squatter's rights. I got here first. Go find somewhere else to sleep."

Setting down the book he'd brought, Scott had gripped the edge of the hammock and yanked, tumbling Bobby out in the grass. "Squatter's rights bow to right of conquest," he'd replied, snatched up his book, and plopped himself down. "The hammock is mine, Drake. Stay out of it."

He's territorial like that. And he _clings_. I figure he must have lost something desperately important to him once, to cling like he does now. When you lose everything, you go one of two ways: you stop caring about things, or you care about them too much. I'm the former, he's the latter.

Funny thing for a thief to admit, not caring about _things_. Or maybe that's why I am a thief. I don't steal because I'm greedy, or even out of need. I steal because it's a thrill. So sue me. But I've never stolen from anyone genuinely poor, and not just because they have nothing worth stealing. I do have ethics.

In any case, I realized now that I needed to go pee again, and I was getting hungry, too. "When are we going to stop for the night?" I asked him. "We won't make Nashville today."

"Not unless we get there after midnight, and the professor doesn't consider it that critical - or he'd have sent us in the blackbird. We'll stop for the night somewhere just over the border into Tennessee, I think."

"So how about stopping for dinner now, then?"

"It's a little early for dinner."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, we seem to have forgotten lunch."

"No, you forgot lunch. I got a hamburger. Besides, I don't eat much when I'm on the road."

"Fine, but I'm hungry! So find the next decent fast-food restaurant, okay?"

He smiled faintly. "I thought decent fast-food was an oxymoron."

"Oh, and tell me you don't eat enough of it, Mr. I-can-eat-a-whole-pizza-myself?"

"I didn't say I didn't eat it. I said 'decent fast-food' was an oxymoron. Not the same thing."

I laughed. He catches you unexpectedly. And while he may drive me nuts with his anal-retentive boot camp routine, I confess that I admire his wit. "Well," I told him, "if 'decent' is out, I'll settle for something with less grease rather than more grease."

So we started looking for a place to eat, wound up at Arby's. At three in the afternoon, it was almost dead, the counter help hanging out and cracking jokes when we entered. They made our roast beef sandwiches fresh. I discovered that Scott likes hot sauce; he put way too much on his and still complained. "Baby hot sauce," he said, "like baby cheese."

"Baby cheese?" I asked, putting normal bar-b-que on mine.

"Soft white cheese with no taste. Baby cheese."

I followed him to a small table near a window. It was sunny out now, nice, with high fluffy cirrus clouds hazing the blue above green mountains. I took the seat across from his. "Scott, you have so much hot sauce on that, you can't taste the food."

"Ah, but you assume I _want_ to taste the food." And he took a bite.

I spit Mountain Dew through my nose, which made my eyes water at the sting. The man is lethal to tender membranes. He grinned around a mouthful of beef, as if he'd scored a battle victory.

It suddenly occurred to me that he was making an effort. Despite what I'd said to him earlier, or maybe because of it, he was making an effort to be friendly. The least I could do was meet him halfway. "If you like hot so much, when we get back to the mansion, I'll make you _siga wat_ \- beef in _berbere_ sauce - and some spicy lentil pot. If you can eat all that and still have a tongue left, you deserve a medal."

"What's _berbere_ sauce?"

"Ethiopian red-pepper sauce. My mother used to make it."

"Sounds good."

"I'll see if you still say so after you taste it. It has a teaspoon of ginger and three tablespoons - that's _table_ spoons - of red pepper."

He just grinned. "Try me."

"You're on. _But_ ," I added, "I have a price."

Both his eyebrows shot up over the rim of his glasses. "Which is?"

"Teach me to fly."

He set down his sandwich and then sat back in his seat, studied me a minute. When he spoke, his voice was soft so that it wouldn't carry - not that there was anyone around us to hear. "You have to know how to read first, Ororo."

Twice with Mountain Dew out the nose. This time, not from amusement.

He went on inexorably, "When you let me teach you to read, then I'll teach you to fly."

I slammed down my cup and leaned across the little two-person table, spat, "What in hell makes you think I can't read?"

"Careful observation."

I glared down at my half-eaten sandwich. "I can read! If I couldn't read, why buy magazines? Or didn't you notice that I _read_ them?"

"You buy fashion magazines and car magazines to look at the pictures. And I've seen you make your way through short things. You can sign your name. That's not reading. You're functionally illiterate."

"I'm not stupid!"

"I never said you were. In fact, I'd say you're pretty damn smart, have a good vocabulary and an excellent memory, which is how you've managed to fake it this long. It wouldn't take much for you to learn to read if you put your mind to it." He glanced out the glass wall beside our table, at a big mustard-tan RV pulling into the parking lot. "I think the 'put your mind to it' is the key."

I glared at the side of his face. "Did Xavier tell you I can't read?"

He shook his head, still without looking at me, as if he were giving my pride space. "No. As I said: observation. Little things added up. So I gave you a test. Do you remember, not long after Wolverine arrived, a practice when I handed each of you some brief written instructions along with verbal orders?"

"And I did exactly what you told me to do!"

He smiled. "Yes. You did exactly what I _told_ you to do. You barely looked at the paper. On it, I'd written, 'Ignore everything I just said and bring me a cup of coffee from the kitchen.'"

"You sneaky son of a bitch! And I could have read that!"

"Probably." He looked back at me. "But you would've had to work at it. So you just glanced at the paper like the rest did, then put it in your pocket because you'd have had to sound it out aloud and you didn't want anyone else to know that. You never looked at it again. Learning to read is a matter of practice, Ororo. But I won't teach you to fly until you can read the manual. It's not safe."

I turned away to glance out across the restaurant. A dozen signs stared back at me, inscribed with their cryptic messages. I could read parts of most, but not all of any. "I wasn't in school anywhere long enough to learn," I told him now.

He hovered at the edge of asking more, then reconsidered and went back to his sandwich. I was grateful. He already knew things about me that I'd worked hard to keep secret, and I stared at my own sandwich. I'd lost my appetite. Folding the silver wrapper around it, I pushed it off to a corner of the tray. He eyed it as he downed the last of his own. "You want it?" I asked.

I could see him consider. Scott rarely turns down food, but then he shook his head. "No, thanks. We should be going."

So we gathered our trash, dumped it in a bin, and headed out. It struck me only as we were leaving that no one had looked at us twice. How very strange. For half an hour, we'd been regarded as normal.

We drove another couple hours, then stopped at a Knights' Inn in Bristol, Tennessee, took side-by-side rooms. He disappeared into his after we'd unloaded our bags and I didn't expect to see him again until morning. I got a Coke out of a machine and some peanuts, changed into sweats and a tank top, then flopped on the horrid, cheap floral bedspread to flip TV channels. The remote was fixed to the night stand to keep anyone from walking off with it, but at least the room was clean and it had one of those little complementary coffee machines to make a cup for those of us who need caffeine in the morning before we can get our eyes to stay open. About an hour or two later, there came a knock on my door. Surprised, I rolled off the bed to peer out the peephole. Scott, on the other side. He was looking off down the walkway and shifting from foot to foot. He almost jumped when I opened the door. "Hey," I said.

"Hey."

Standing aside, I made a wordless gesture of invitation and he stopped three steps inside the door. He was wearing black sport shorts - the first time I'd ever seen him in anything that casual - and a New York Knicks sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped out. I hadn't known he was a Knicks fan. He seemed unaccountably nervous. "Is there some emergency?" I asked.

"What? Oh, no. No emergency."

I started to say, "Then what're you doing here?" but bit it back. Maybe he'd just been bored, like me. Or maybe this was more of his awkward effort to be friendly. It was kind of charming, in a stiff Scott-way. "You want some peanuts?" I asked instead.

My question seemed to throw him for a loop, as if common hospitality was as unexpected as sighting a bald eagle. "Peanuts?"

"Yeah. You know, those little tan oval things they make Bobby's peanut butter out of?"

Abruptly, he grinned and his shoulders relaxed a little. "No, but thanks. I'm not hungry. I, um, walked over to get something to eat at the Village Inn."

"And you didn't invite me?"

There was a momentary pause, and I was sure that if I could've seen his eyes, he'd be blinking in surprise. "I, uh, didn't figure you'd want to go."

"Why?"

"I ... Um ... I just ... " Completely at a loss. Once again, we hovered on the edge of something, but this time, he took the step over. "I didn't think you wanted to spend time with me."

Now, I had two choices: be honest or be polite. But Politeness and Ororo have never been more than nodding acquaintances, so I said, "If you'd asked me yesterday, I wouldn't have."

His eyebrows shot up. "And today?"

I smiled. "You're not so bad, Cyclops. At least not when you lighten up a little."

He actually grinned at that. "Gee, thanks. And, um, you can call me Scott."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Scott, sir."

"Cut it out, Ororo!" But he was still smiling.

"It's Ro."

"Huh?"

"Ororo is a mouthful. I'll call you Scott if you call me Ro."

"Deal." He held out a hand and we shook on it. His grip was firm. "You want to go to the Village Inn?"

"I thought you ate?"

"I can always eat twice."

"Or three times, more like."

"Or three times. I didn't get any pie last time."

"Then let's go get pie."

So we left my room and crossed the parking lot, jaywalked the street to enter the restaurant. If anyone noticed that he was back again, they didn't comment. Here at the height of summer, the sun was only now going down in a backdrop of wine velvet as a waitress showed us to a table near a window, gave us cheap plastic laminated menus, and disappeared to fetch a Mountain Dew for me and an iced tea for Scott. With lemon. Hot sauce on his roast beef and lemon in his tea. He doesn't like bland food. I discarded the real menu and went right for the pie menu. "Hey!" Scott said as my fingers closed on it before his did.

"The early bird gets the worm," I told him.

He started to fetch a second menu from one of the tables nearby, but then got up and joined me on my side of the table. Sitting as we were in chairs, it wasn't quite as forward as it might have been in a booth, but it was unexpected from him. It turned out that he had an ulterior motive. Covering the pictures with his palm, he pointed to a description and said, "Read it."

I glared at him. "Is this my first lesson?"

"I guess. I figured you'd have incentive, if pie was your reward."

I glanced around at other tables. We were mostly isolated, whether by chance or by deliberation because the waitress had guessed we were mutants, I couldn't say. No one was paying us any attention. So slowly, laboriously, I worked through the description.

I have to read out loud, and if a sentence is too long, I can't remember the whole of it by the time I get to the end. Likewise, if the word isn't spelled like it sounds, I'm clueless. At one point, he said, "Enough," and I replied, "Thank god!" to which he responded, "No, I meant that word is 'enough.'"

"But there's no F in it," I said.

"The 'o-u-g-h' is pronounced as an '-uf.'"

"Why not spell it that way?"

"Because English is crazy? I don't know."

"At least you're not defending it."

The wry smile. "No, I'm not defending it. That doesn't mean you don't have to learn it."

"Unh!"

"Look, Ro, nobody will say that English is easy to learn. But you can do this. And I bet the next time you see 'enough,' you'll recognize it."

He was right; I probably would. And so my first lesson continued. I might hate this, but I wanted to fly, and I knew Cyclops too well to assume that I could get him to back down on his stipulation. The waitress came three times to take our order and he sent her away with a "We haven't decided yet" each time. On the last, she rolled her eyes where even we could see.

"You'd better tip her well," I warned him.

"As long as she doesn't spit in my tea, we're cool."

I laughed. "And how would you know if she did?"

He shrugged and pointed to the last pie description. "We're almost done. One more." Intent on what he was doing, he'd braced his right arm on the back of my chair and leaned in to point with his left. Very close. He smelled good in that clean-man way, Irish Spring and new sweat, and I was suddenly hyper-conscious of his body heat, the quiet murmur of our voices. His is low in level rather than pitch, a surprisingly pure, high baritone. He was a patient teacher, too, unlike his drill sergeant approach to battle. That, more than anything, surprised me. But he wouldn't quit. If I got frustrated, he let me rant a moment, then made me repeat whatever had me stumped.

Finally, we were done and he crossed his arms on the tabletop, leaned in to look at my face. "So? What kind of pie do you want?"

I thwacked him on the head. "After that, I want a whole dinner!"

He just laughed and it struck me that, in the last hour or so since he'd shown up at my door, the dynamics of our relationship had altered fundamentally, and completely. He was no longer shy, or slightly hostile, and seemed to have decided that I wasn't going to bite him. I'm not sure what I'd decided, but his proximity was making me jittery.

Now, he rose up a little to look around. "I think I'll have to go find the waitress; she gave up on us."

And so we had our pie. After reading the whole menu, and despite what I'd said to him, I wasn't about to go for something else. I needed chocolate. Lots of chocolate. He ordered simple apple cobbler, which surprised me, given his fetish for chocolate milk. But I suppose it was a matter of baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. Or maybe Ford. Black mustang. A 1969 R-Code Mustang Fastback. That was Scott to a T.

"What are you thinking?" he asked when he caught me grinning for no reason.

"Trying to imagine what kind of car you'd choose, if you could have any car you wanted."

" _Any_ car?"

"Any car."

"What kind did you guess?"

"Mustang Fastback. You seem like a classics kind of guy. John Mellencamp, Indiana, and Ford."

That got a very strange reaction, not quite a laugh, not quite a look of disgust. "Not even close," he said.

"No?"

"No."

"So what _would_ you choose?"

"I didn't mean the car. I meant the description of me. I like the car. A lot, actually. I like John Mellencamp, too. 'You gotta stand right up for something, or you're gonna fall for anything.'"

He actually sang it, didn't just quote it. His pitch was true even _a capella_. I'd had no idea he could sing, would never have guessed it in a hundred years. I hid my surprise under a Mellencamp line of my own, "I fight authority, authority always wins . . . ."

That made him laugh outright. "That's you, Ro."

I stuck my fork in my mouth and licked off the last bit of chocolate. "So tell me, if you like the car and you like ol' John, why was that a bad description?"

The smile fell off his mouth. "It just was."

I started to push but changed my mind. There was more than one way to skin a cat. Or open a locked door.

When we were done, we walked back to the motel. On the way, he asked me about the places I'd been to while hoofing it around the country. "All forty-eight continental states," I told him. I asked him about his eyes. "What color are they?"

"Red, now."

"Unh!" And I hit his shoulder. " _Originally_ , dingbat!"

"Hey! I'm going to have bruises, woman!"

"Then answer my question and quit hedging."

"I wasn't hedging! They're red! They were brown."

"Brown? What color of brown?"

"Man, I don't know! Brown!"

"Scott, my eyes are brown and Denzel Washington's eyes are brown, but they're not the same brown. I mean, are yours light brown, medium brown, or cow eyes?"

" _Cow_ eyes?"

"Yeah, you know, so dark you can't see the pupil."

He just shook his head. "Cow eyes, I guess. They were pretty dark." He was quiet a moment, then asked, "Why do girls always want to know what color my eyes were?"

"Watch it with the gender generalizations, buster."

"Well, Jean asked a long time ago. And then Wanda, too - it was about the third thing out of her mouth to me. 'What color are your eyes?' Christ! _Hank's_ never asked!"

"It's the _mystery_ ," I told him, grinning. "And I just bet Wanda Maximoff wanted to know what color your eyes were."

"Lay off it, Ro. Wanda drove me crazy the whole time I was there."

"Aww. There was no smoochy-smoochy for Little Miss Magneto, huh?"and then I dashed off, laughing. He chased me all the way back. At least he played fair and didn't just blast me.

We might have parted company at my door, but completely on the spur, I asked him if he could play jacks. He must have gaped at me for ten whole seconds, then said, " _Jacks?_ As in a rubber ball and little spiky things?"

"Yeah. Jacks."

"Once upon a time, I could play jacks. I think. Man, I don't even _remember_ that far back."

"You don't?"

"No." Almost absently, he touched the back of his head. "I don't remember a lot from before I was about eight or nine. I was in an accident, had some brain damage."

"Oh." I mean, what do you say to 'I had some brain damage'? "I'm sorry." It sounded lame.

"I'm all right now. Except for these." He tapped his glasses.

"That's why you have to wear the glasses?" I hadn't known there was a reason, beyond his power itself.

He shrugged. "The part of my brain that should control the blasts doesn't work any more."

"Can they fix it?" It was an intrusive question, but I was curious.

"'They' who? It's not something I can take to a hospital. How many samples of what constitutes 'normal' for my mutation has anybody seen? But in any case, no, the professor doesn't think it can be fixed, even if someone knew enough to try. He lives in a wheelchair. I live with these." He touched the glasses again.

And that, I thought, might explain Xavier's attachment to Scott. On probation Scott might be, but we all knew that if any of the _rest_ of us had pulled that stunt with Magneto - Jean possibly excepted - we'd have been kicked out on our cans. I've seen Xavier chew Scott up one side and down the other for no apparent reason, but I still think he could forgive Scott anything, if push came to shove. Not that he'd tell Scott as much; he'd die and go to hell first.

"So, you wanna play jacks?"

He shook his head, but said, "Sure. Did you _bring_ jacks?"

"I always bring jacks. Stupid childhood addiction, but it's good practice for finger agility." And I wriggled mine in his face.

"Once a thief, always a thief."

"I hear the pot calling the kettle black, mister. Which of us stole the Blackbird?"

"I brought it back."

"Yeah. But you still stole it in the first place." I keyed open my door and glanced sidewise at him. "Very slick that, I have to say."

His smile was lopsided. "You would be impressed, wouldn't you?"

"It's a compliment." I switched on the lights in my room and dropped the keycard on the dresser by the TV. He followed me in. "I'm a hard girl to impress."

"I'll keep that in mind." He grinned.

* * *

 **Notes:** Ultimate Storm is a different girl from her traditional goddess self. The biggest difference is Ultimate Storm's sass. Ultimate Scott can be a wise-cracker, as well, but I'm maintaining his canon shyness. Incidently, and while I write movie-Scott's eyes as blue because Marsden's are, comics-Scott's eyes are brown. Ororo's are supposed to be blue, but in Ultimate, they're gold-tan. If you think Storm wouldn't comment on Jean's skin color, remember she does just that in issue #4 regarding the president's daughter. The John Mellencamp lyrics are from "You Gotta Stand for Something" off _Scarecrow_ , and the "Authority Song," off _Uh-Huh_.


	2. Music City (Scott)

"We're going to stay _here_?" Storm asked.

"Yes, we are."

"Xavier's gonna kill us. It'll cost a fortune."

"Xavier made us reservations," I said.

"Here" was The Hermitage Hotel, a Beaux arts building right across from the Tennessee State Capitol. It had a red awning over the door, and large, beautiful arched windows ... one of those five-star Grand Hotels that Xavier prefers, quite a step up from the Knights Inn of the evening before. I'd never get used to this, no matter how long I was an X-Man. I felt like a goddamn imposter even walking through the front door. Cheap white trash dumped on the wrong sidewalk. For that matter, it still felt odd to drive a Mercedes, like I should be watching my rear-view mirror for flashing blue. Grand Theft Auto. But that's Ororo's department.

Why the fuck had she thought I was from _Indiana,_ epitome of Midwestern Americana, anyway? And did that offend me, or relieve me?

"There are reasons for it, Ro," I said as I pulled into the drive circle. "The niceties of upper-class social convention can hide a multitude of eccentric sins." Opening the door, I tossed the keys to a valet and let the bellhop get our bags as I walked around to assist Ro, but she was already getting out with the help of another valet, and showing lots of leg in process. She wore a lycra knit mini-dress that fit like a body glove, and the valet looked ready to pee himself. She has that effect on men. Maybe I should've put her in that dress and sent _her_ into the Brotherhood headquarters in Croatia, instead of Beast. She'd have incapacitated Toad, Blob and Quicksilver at a single glance.

Not a very egalitarian thought, Summers, I told myself. But it had made me grin.

She threw the valet a little dimpled smile like a dog biscuit, then flicked open her sunglasses to perch them on her nose. Moving up beside her, I offered my arm and we headed for the lobby. Two of the bell hops practically leapt to open the doors for us, and I confess, it pumped my ego to know that they thought she was with me. Fat chance of that, if Peter, Peter the pumpkin eater had been around.

Which thought gave me mental pause. Since when had I cared whom Storm was mooning after? I put it out of my head and turned my attention to business.

The lobby was ... overwhelming, and I've been in some overwhelming hotels. Red and gold everywhere - rug, draperies, chairs, even the fucking wallpaper - indoor palms, mottled marble pillars arcing up to a spectacular Italian stained-glass skylight, plush furniture. Fucking obscene. The cost of decorating the lobby alone would have fed an entire Somalian village for a year.

"This is sick," Ororo muttered beside me, and surprised, I glanced down at her. She was still wearing her sunglasses like a movie star gone incognito, and I wondered, idly, if she was doing so because I had to wear them, or if she was just feeling blinded by the opulence. "There were days I'd have sold my soul to eat out of this place's _trash cans_."

It wasn't the reaction I'd expected. Jean basked in places like this, and Xavier took them in stride. "Yeah, I know," I said now. She glanced over at me sharply, and it dawned on me that she'd have no idea how I could know any such thing. "I ate out of trash cans a few times, too."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah, really." I felt defensive.

She studied my face a minute, then turned away, patted my arm. "Sorry. Let's go get our rooms. We may as well enjoy it."

"I have a hard time 'enjoying' ostentatious wealth."

"What about the mansion? You seem to enjoy living there."

"It's a school, among other things. The professor spends his fortune helping others."

"True. But he also likes his Perrier instead of tap water. There's no sense in going through life on a guilt trip, Scott."

"You were the one who said it was sick. I was just agreeing with you."

She sighed and I could see that her eyes had gone white behind her glasses, like they do when she's upset or anxious, even if it doesn't spoil the weather. She doesn't have complete control of her powers yet, and it occurred to me that she might have her own reasons for wearing sunglasses indoors. "So I'm occasionally a hypocrite," she said. "It's not going to stop me from finding the Jacuzzi."

I checked us in, and checked with the concierge for any messages, not that I expected any, but I like to cover all bases. Then we went up to our room. Suite, actually. Living area, kitchenette, two bedrooms. Tasteful decor in reds and some other jewel-tone color I thought might be blue. Or maybe green. In any case, the suite had a fucking _baby grand piano_. Ororo saw the piano and forgot anything else. Charmed, she sat down, tore her sunglasses off and ran fingers over the keys. "You play?" I asked, dumbfounded, as I tipped the bellhop. He left us alone after depositing our luggage - hers and mine both - in the larger of the two bedrooms. I didn't bother to correct his mistake; I'd move mine later.

"Not really," she was saying, a little smile fixed on her face. "But my father played and I used to fiddle around on his, when I was small. It wasn't so fine as this, but I loved it." Her smile faded into a frown and I watched her plunk keys unhappily. I didn't know a lot about Ro's background - the professor isn't in the habit of divulging a student's history to another student - but I did know that she'd been on the street because she was an orphan. Like me.

I leaned up against the jamb of the bedroom door. "What kind of music did he play?"

"Anything. He could play anything. Couldn't read a note, but if he heard it, he could play it. We used to sing together."

"You loved him."

"He was my father. I thought him second only to the Prophet."

"You're Muslim?" I'd had no idea.

"My parents were." She glanced over and smiled slyly at me. "Most Moroccans are, Scott."

"I thought your mother was Ethiopian?"

She left off messing with the piano and turned on the bench to face me. "I said she could make _berbere_ sauce. I never said she was Ethiopian. Actually, she was from Senegal, but moved to Rabat, where she met my father. They emigrated to the States when I was nine, opened a little restaurant in Atlanta called ... " she drew it out for drama " _ _Café__ _Américain_."

I laughed. "Of course. Were there lots of pictures of Bogart and Bergman on the walls?"

She nodded, smiling. "And a piano, of course. Which my father used to play. He even let people call him Sam," and she ghosted out the familiar melody, sang, _"You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply, as time goes by."_ She had an amazing voice, rich like espresso, or German chocolate.

"So you speak Moroccan?"

She said something - God knew what - then in English, added, "That's Arabic, Scott. The official language of Morocco is Arabic. But I also speak Berber and a little French, besides English."

"Man, you're _quad_ lingual? I'm officially impressed. But 'Ororo' isn't Arabic."

"No. My mother named me that."

"And Munroe isn't Arabic either."

She smiled. "'Munroe' wasn't the name I was born with."

I felt my eyebrow go up. "So what was?"

But she didn't answer me, just turned back to the piano. I didn't want to pry, understanding the desire to keep one's secrets, but I didn't want to let this go so easily, either. "Do you have an Arabic name, in addition to Ororo? Not a last name, I mean."

"Jamilah."

"It's pretty." It was. Like water over rocks.

"My father called me Jilah." She plunked some more, almost idly. The notes tumbled over each other in an abstract tune. "al-Maliji," she said after a minute.

"What?"

"My birth name. Jamilah Ororo al-Maliji. Munroe was just easier for people to remember, on the street."

It was an offer of trust. I needed to give her something back. "My first name is Michael. Michael Scott Summers."

She glanced around at me and smiled. "Why change it to Scott?"

"I didn't. I've been Scott as long as I can remember." True enough. I just didn't explain that I couldn't remember what I'd been called before the brain damage that had fucked up my life.

Abruptly, I stood. "I should contact the professor, let him know we've arrived and find out if he has a firmer location on the girl."

Which he did. _This could get complicated, Cyclops_ , he told me inside my head. I had a special device in my visor that was an extension of Cerebro. Of course, the professor could contact us without Cerebro, but it put more of a strain on him. I'd ripped the device out before going to the Savage Land, so we'd had to reinstall it before I came here. Now, I lay on one of the beds in the smaller bedroom, hands folded on my chest, eyes closed. It was easier this way. _As I briefed you before you left,_ the professor went on, _this girl has been fading in and out of Cerebro's monitor for weeks, and I'm not at all certain of the cause. This has never before happened with a mutant signature._

 _Could it be that she's just not fully come into her powers yet?_

 _Possible, but given the strength of her signature at other times, I find that unlikely. I fear it is what we discussed previously: the interference of drug use on a psionic mutation._

 _I should warn Ororo about that._ It was half a statement, half a request for permission. I didn't like keeping aspects of a mission from my teammates, and there were things about this one that troubled me. I worried that Ororo was being used, and wondered how much I was, as well. _She should know what we might be up against._

There was a pause, then the professor agreed. _Do so. Remember that I have assigned both of you to this for specific reasons. You have experiences which the others do not. And Cyclops, Storm can be an excellent actress. Follow her lead when you go undercover._

 _Yes, sir._ I wrote down the information the professor related as to where we were likely to find the girl, then switched the visor for my glasses and went out to make plans with Ro. 

* * *

"Your ID," I handed her one of the two fake driver's licenses that the professor had prepared for us, before we'd left. Of course, my real license was just as fake. Legal photo IDs required that the eyes be visible: an impossibility in my case. The picture on my license was an extremely fine image manipulation. "Don't abuse it," I told her. "It's for the mission, not to buy jello shots."

"Don't trust me?"

"Should I?"

Making a mou of cherry-red lips, she said, "You wound me."

"No, I don't."

That just got a dimpled grin. "I won't abuse it, don't worry." And she slipped the ID and some money into the bustline of that body-glove dress which she still wore for our foray on the town. Watching the card disappear beside café latte skin was ... distracting, which I'm sure she'd intended. Ro isn't above yanking even my chain.

"Aren't you going to put that in your purse instead?"

"What purse?"

"You're not taking your purse?"

She turned to look at me. "Why would I take my purse into a club? I can't dance with it."

"We're not here to dance. We're here to look for a mutant."

"No kidding. But I thought we were _undercover_?" She reached out to run a thumb over my lips, playfully. "I plan to dance, boyfriend."

I jerked away. "This isn't a game."

She grew serious. "No, it's not. But we have to look convincing, okay? If you're supposed to be my date, you can't act like my touch gives you the heebie jeebies."

"It's not that."

"Then what it is?"

"It's just - " And what was I supposed to say? 'It's not the heebie jeebies, Ro, it's a hard-on?' That would go over fucking splendidly. Of course, I'm sure she already knew exactly what it was. She was teasing me, didn't mean to be cruel. But it was cruel. Having control over my body was my personal religion, for a lot of reasons.

I opened my own car door. "Never mind. Stay there; I'll come around to help you out, if you're so worried about playing this right." She did as I said, and I handed her from the car, tried not to notice how the sleeveless top strained over ample cleavage.

Christ. I was on a mission, dammit, and it didn't include speculating on the cup size of my female teammates. Not for the first time, I wished we could do this in uniform. In uniform, I didn't have these problems. In uniform, I could detach my mind from my rebellious body, see her as someone under my command, my protection. Not a gorgeous woman in lethal lycra.

She hooked her hand under my elbow and we crossed the street from the chintzy dirt parking lot where I'd had to leave the Mercedes (thank God for alarm systems and The Club), to the door of the 'Film Noir.' Fucking pretentious name. This was hardly upscale Nashville. The windows of the stores had bars on them and all the buildings were faded, crumbling a bit at the edges. Several had been boarded up. An abandoned grocery cart listed half into a gutter. "Charming."

A bouncer sat outside the club door and watched us with a bored expression as we approached. The music was loud enough to be heard even outside. Retro '80s New Wave at odds with the club name.

 _Your uniform doesn't seem to fit._  
 _You're much too alive in it._  
 _You've been letting your feelings show,_  
 _Are you safe, Miss Gredenko . . . ?_

He took my money for the cover but despite our preparations, didn't ask either of us for an ID. I wasn't surprised, and not because I look older than I am. I found myself wishing for my visor. It was folded up in an interior pocket of my leather jacket if I needed it, but would require precious seconds to get onto my face. I put more trust in the switchblade up my sleeve. Ro had a knife of her own strapped under the hem of the dress, and I was sure she knew how to use it.

Inside, it was impossible to hear myself think, much less speak over the music. I wouldn't have minded the decibel level if I hadn't been on a mission. I could feel the bass line in my molars and my solar plexus and the balls of my feet.

 _Is anybody alive in here?_  
 _Is anybody alive in here?_  
 _Is anybody alive in here?_  
 _Nobody but us . . . ._

The clientele was . . . interesting. Most were high or drunk, or both, and between the tattoos and piercings, studded leather and purple lip-stick, they would have made Wolverine look like a Boy Scout. Strobe lights left over from the '80s and a kaleidoscope dance floor, along with dry ice, gave everything a surreal effect, like hell on speed. "Where's the brimstone?" I shouted. "And I thought punk was out?"

"Nothing ever goes _out_ , Scott," Storm yelled back. "Besides, this is goth, not punk."

"If it's not punk, what do you call that guy with the green mohawk and a ring through his nose?"

"A pig with bad taste?"

I burst out laughing and she smirked, plastered herself to my side like the brainless trophy girl she was dressed to be, and pulled me through the crowd, bobbing her head to the beat. I remembered what Xavier had said: follow her lead, but I couldn't begin to conform. "Relax," she whisper-shouted in my ear. "They'll think you're a vice cop, and we won't find out a damn thing."

She had a point, but I'm a lousy actor. Still, I tried to relax, and slipped an arm around her shoulders. "Better," she mouthed at me.

Miraculously, we found an empty table on the upper mezzanine. Or maybe the skinny kid who'd occupied it was intimidated by my height and my leather. He gave it over when he saw us, and Ro sat me down in a chair. Then instead of seating herself opposite, she plopped down right in my lap. But she wasn't watching me at all, just using the added height and the vantage of our place near the rail to survey the room below. "Do we know what this girl looks like?" she bent to ask. "Aside from not being white?"

Her bending had put her cleavage right at my eye level. "She's, um, Native American," I said. "Average height. I assume black hair. Ro, would you mind moving? I can't see anything." Well, I could see plenty, but it wasn't what I ought to be looking at.

She moved. "You can't assume black hair. I knew a girl once, half Menominee and half German with curly pumpkin-red hair and freckles. And where's that mini-cerebro that you have?"

"In my visor, unfortunately."

"Given the way some of these people are dressed, Cyclops, I don't think the visor would get a second glance."

"Yes, it would. Trust me. I could come in here wrapped around in chains and no one would look twice, but If I put on the visor, I may as well hang a sign around my neck that read 'mutie.'"

"So we're on our own?"

"Powers of observation only. And the professor."

"He can speak to us this far away?"

 _Indeed._ It was said into both of our heads. _I've been monitoring your progress since you left the hotel._

Great, I thought privately. I'd known he was there - he's always with us on missions - but I tend to forget it until he reminds me, or until I remind myself. I wondered what he thought of my less than gentlemanly observations regarding Storm's cleavage?

 _Do you have any idea where she is?_ , Storm was sending to the professor. Even at this distance, Xavier could link us to each other, not just to himself. Trouble was, utilizing telepathy when my eyes were open always made me slightly motion sick, as if the room were spinning. I had to swallow back nausea.

 _I am afraid,_ the professor was saying, _that I am as handicapped in this as you. Due to the peculiar nature of this mutant's mental signature, I cannot tell you any more than that she was at your present location earlier. I am not reading her at all, currently._

 _So she might not even be here now?_ , Storm asked.

 _Unfortunately, yes. Storm, why don't you go down and canvas the room, and Cyclops, remain on guard at the upper level, to keep an eye out for potential trouble._

In what I hoped was a private thought, I sent, _Should we be expecting any?_

 _I do not know. Previously, her periodic disappearances from Cerebro's monitor have always been followed by explosive reaffirmations, the kind that one would expect from an extremely strong psion exercising her talent with little or no control._

 _Similar to what you felt when Storm called the lightning in Texas that nearly killed those kids?_

 _Yes, exactly. And considering Storm's mental state immediately after that event, this girl may be traumatized by the time you reach her._

I nodded. He couldn't see it, but I knew he could feel my agreement. Most of us were a little traumatized when our powers manifested. Or a lot traumatized.

 _Oh, and Scott?_

 _Yes, sir?_

 _Regarding Storm's cleavage ..._

I felt myself flush from the roots of my hair all the way to my toes.

 _... I would be far more worried about you, if you had not expressed the thoughts that you did._ I could just hear the humor in that. _You are almost nineteen, male, and perfectly healthy, and thus,_ normal, _although I know how little you feel so. Enjoy the dress. I think she means you to._

And with that enigmatic last quip, he faded in my head, still there, but not active. He'd turned his conscious attention to Ororo, no doubt, and I watched her make her way through the crowd below, loose white hair a glossy beacon. She really was stunning. Hardly a new observation - a man would have to be blind not to appreciate her looks - but it suddenly hit me at a different level, one not so intellectual. She _was_ beautiful, and classy despite her background in a way that Jean wasn't. Odd. Jean had been steeped in that upper-class debutante atmosphere, but it was Ororo who had the poise. Ro could be a smart ass, occasionally insubordinate, and too clever by half, but she was also fundamentally grounded. The street did that to you: grew you up or took you apart. And sometimes it did both at once by killing your optimism. I understood Ro, and for all her quirkiness, respected her. If I hadn't been Cyclops, I'd have been Storm. She'd follow me because she chose to, not because she'd been told to. I could trust that, because I knew she'd object if she thought I was wrong. In all fairness, so would Jean, but Jean was too sympathetic. She trusted people too readily because she believed that people were fundamentally good, and I wasn't sure some days if she was attracted to people like me, and Wolverine, because of our dark side, or because she wanted to save us from it. Maybe both.

And what, in the end, did I believe? The professor's dream, or Magneto's paranoia? Maybe a little of both. Despite what people thought, I hadn't run to Magneto because of Jean and the Wolverine. Or because Hank had nearly been killed. Those had only been straws that had broken the camel's back. I'd gone because what Magneto had said to me in Croatia had made more sense, given my past experiences, than what Xavier preached. I wanted to believe Xavier, but in my heart, I believed Magneto. It was the man's methods that gave me the creeps. The more I'd seen, the more I'd realized that I couldn't ally myself with that. So I'd gone home. And I _was_ pleased that the professor's actions on behalf of the president had met with public appreciation finally in Washington. But I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. As I'd told Jean at one point, gratitude was a tricky thing to trust in because people are fickle, and have short memories. I gave it half a year before fear once more replaced gratitude in the public awareness. We'd be living for a long time at the edges of public acceptance, constantly needing to prove ourselves, but the choice I'd made in the Savage Land (unconsciously more than consciously) was that - as depressing as that prospect might be - it was better than a war. The road to hell was wide and easy, and if I didn't believe a lot of what the Bible said, I did believe that. Sometimes hard was best; I'd walked a hard road before, just to be standing where I was now. I could survive hard.

Meanwhile, on the floor below, Ro had made a complete circuit without finding anything, and now, made her way onto the dance floor. I'd assumed that she planned to search there, and for a few minutes, that's what she appeared to be doing. Before long, however she was just dancing, not searching. What the fuck? I'd told her we weren't here to dance! But soon, I stopped worrying about it and just watched, entranced.

It wasn't sexual. Despite the dress, despite a figure like that, despite her own eyes-closed, head-back abandon, it wasn't sexual. Instead, she became the music, her white hair swinging and her body incarnating the rhythm in a way I could never manage, body-paranoid as I was. I loved music, it calmed me, and singing was a private joy. It opened up part of my soul. But I couldn't dance. For Ro, her body was her voice; she sang on the floor. Hypnotic. She didn't give a damn if anyone else was watching, and for that reason, people did. She entered the music, let it move her limbs by driving her heart. I had to tear my eyes away to scan the crowd but found my gaze kept drifting back. People had moved away to give her room, a strange act of respect in a place like this. But she was creating sacred space with her body and her feet.

That's when I noticed the other girl. She hadn't been there just a few minutes before, but seeing Ro dance must have lured her out of some hidden pocket in the crush of crowd. Like Ro, she danced for the music, not the watchers, moving in a sway like long prairie grass, black hair sweeping her shoulders and her face lifted up to an invisible sky.

She was Native American.

I was moving almost before I thought about it, table abandoned to head for the stairs to the lower level. _Professor!_

 _Yes, Cyclops. I am aware; Storm spotted her. But be careful. There may be more than one Indian in Nashville, you know._ More of that bubble mental laughter.

 _Agreed. Storm, we converge on the target._

 _Woah!_ \- Ro's mental voice - _She's a_ girl _, not an 'objective.' Chill, Cyclops. Let me handle this._

 _Professor?_

But he didn't reply. He was going to let me call this one. All right. I had to trust my team at some point. _She's yours,_ I sent to Ro. _I'll be on the sideline if you need me._

The music was ending, and I could see the inevitable shift and shuffle as dancers left the floor to let others squeeze on. People jostled me and I ground my teeth together. Man, I hate crowds like this, and not just out of fear that my glasses might slip. I couldn't see where Ro had gotten to. Six feet is on the tall side, but I'm not Peter. Even craning my neck, I caught no glimpse of white hair. It was too late to return to my table above; that was long gone. Fuck, I'd been too impulsive again. If I could just see where Ro was, and whether or not she'd managed to contact the girl. _Professor?_ But he didn't answer. He must be concentrating on Ro and I shouldn't distract him. Instead, I raised a hand to pat the lump my visor made inside my jacket, just to reassure myself that it was still there.

"Hey!" It was shouted at what seemed like my elbow. I glanced around, and down. Black pixie hair, pale skin, some dark shade of eyeshadow over eyes that might be green or might be blue - I could never tell - and lots of black lace, including a fine net over her face from a pillbox hat. Silver and amethyst exotic jewelry, but it matched instead of clashed. She looked like a gothic version of Jackie O, and I couldn't decide if I found that attractive, or just weird. "Dance?" she shouted at me, though she seemed to be dancing already right where she was, beer bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other. Her bow-curved lips were very red.

I shook my head and turned away.

"Why not?" she yelled at me, tugging on my sleeve again.

"I don't dance," I replied, not looking at her and hoping she'd get the message.

"Watcha doing next to the dance floor then, staring at it like you lost your best friend?"

"I'm waiting for someone."

"Oh!" She smirked. "Girl gone off with somebody else?"

"No." I still wasn't looking at her. Where the hell was Ororo?

"You a vice cop or something?"

The question made me jump and glance around. "Huh?" I remembered what Ororo had warned me of. And it was true. Three years ago, I'd have nailed me as a vice cop, too. Or actually, not vice. Vice was too good at their jobs. More generic government type. "I'm not a cop at all," I told her now.

"Of course not." She studied me with wise eyes. "Don't worry, Mister. I'm legal." And she wove away through the crowd.

Shit. That was all we needed, a rumor running rampant that I was law enforcement. Reaching out, I grabbed a piece of lace and hauled her about. "I'm not a cop," I said, annoyed.

Her expression hovered between confusion at my action, and faint alarm. "Okay. Fine. You're not a cop. Let me go."

"Sorry." I did as she asked. "I'm . . . in the military. That's all. I don't fucking like cops."

"Your girl in the military, too?"

"What makes you think I have a girl?"

"Well who else were you waiting for? Cinderella?"

"Just a friend."

That same knowing smile. "Yeah. Sure." She jerked her chin back towards the dance floor. "Go find your girl - "

She never finished. The front door slammed open and a voice shouted, "Everyone freeze! This is the Nashville Police Department." Figures in black riot gear were sweeping into the room, carrying floodlights.

"What the hell?" I muttered, along with about five hundred other people, though it was obvious enough what it was. Vice raid. This was too freaking weird. I started to reach for my visor but thought better of it. It might look like I was reaching for a concealed weapon. Which I was, after a fashion.

"Not a vice cop, huh?" Jackie O Goth shouted beside me.

"I'm not!" I yelled back.

Others in the crowd were less circumspect than I'd been. Knives appeared in hands and all hell broke loose. A good dozen patrons leapt at the cops . . . only to pass right through and slam into the wall behind.

"What the fuck!" someone shouted. "They're not friggin' _real_!"

"Is this some kind of motherfucking VR show without the goddamn goggles?" another yelled.

Bouncers and management were on the scene, but of course couldn't stop the manifestation. Mirage cops continued to shout, and now fired harmless bullets into the crowd. Had it not been so clearly a hallucination, it would have been terrifying. As it was, it frightened mostly because no one seemed to know what was causing it.

But I had a damn good idea.

Leaving Jackie O Goth behind, I wormed my way between people, looking for Storm and trying to contact the professor. But he was still shut down from me; he must be focused on trying to contain the psionic illusion. The mood in the room had turned rapidly ugly, aided by alcohol and other chemicals. Bottles were being thrown and knives hadn't gone back into sheathes. I pulled out my visor with my left hand and palmed my own knife in my right.

"Where the hell did they go?" I heard behind me and glanced over my shoulder. The mirage cops had disappeared, but it wasn't calming the mood. If anything the crowd was getting worse. We had to get out of here, and quickly. If the rest caught wind of what was really going on, and who was causing it, Storm and I would have our hands full protecting the girl, _if_ we could without a lot of people getting hurt, and a lot of property damage, too . . . which would undo everything accomplished in Washington a week ago.

The professor was suddenly back in my head. _To your left, Cyclops. They're in the women's restroom. Meet them there and get out through the window._

 _Yes, sir. Did Cerebro read that ... whatever it was?_

 _Indeed, it did._

I looked for bathroom signs, spotted them past the dart boards near the bar, and headed in that direction. My body had slammed into battle high. When I pushed the door open on the women's room, I was nearly zapped by lightning. "Don't blast me, dammit," I said.

"Didn't your mommy ever teach you that the door with the skirt was for little _girls_?" Adrenaline made Storm snappish.

"Can it. There's a riot starting out there." I glanced at the Indian girl, now hanging unconscious in Ro's arms. "What happened to her?"

"I slugged her."

Well, that was one way to handle it. I scanned the little room. The only window was high and narrow. No way we were climbing through that. "Get back from the wall." And I switched my glasses for my visor. Considering what was going on in the main room, one more hole in a wall wouldn't matter. So I blasted a good chunk of concrete from around the window, then took the unconscious girl while Ro pulled off her heels and hoisted herself out with a boost on my knee. I passed up the girl and started to follow, gripping Ro's hand for leverage.

At that moment, the door swung open in a blast of noise from the brawl outside. I jerked around. It was Jackie O Goth. She'd lost her pillbox hat. "What the hell?" she asked. "I thought I saw you come in here. And what happened to the fucking _wall_?" She was staring at my visor.

"Don't ask hard questions if you don't want hard answers."

"Are you responsible for what's going on out there? People are getting trampled, dammit!"

"I'm not responsible, no. We're trying to get out the person who is, not to hide her," I added when I saw thunder start on the girl's face. "To help her."

"She didn't do it on purpose," Ro added from above, her face appearing in the blasted-out hole. "We came to stop her from doing any more damage, accidentally."

Jackie O Goth studied Ro, then glanced again at me. "What are you people? No, don't answer that." She held up a hand. She seemed to make some decision and came forward. "Just get me the fuck out of here." I exchanged a glance with Ororo, who nodded. So I hoisted up Jackie O through the blasted wall, then followed myself. God knew why I trusted the girl. Surely not just because she could get her Wiccan jewelry to match.

The alley outside amounted to a crawlspace between buildings. It stank of beer vomit and piss, and someone had scrawled obscenities on brick. "What next?" Ro asked.

"There'll be bouncers at the back and front, to catch trouble makers," Jackie O supplied. "If you go waltzing out there with an unconscious girl, and that" - she pointed to my visor - "they're gonna stop you." And she was right.

"Too bad we can't go up," I said, eyeing the crack of night sky above.

"Who says we can't?" Storm.

I glanced sharply at her. I knew she'd been practicing the manipulation of air currents to lift herself, but ... "I didn't know you'd mastered that yet."

"I don't know that I have, but we haven't got many other options right now, do we?"

"Mastered what?" Jackie O asked.

"Watch and see," Storm said, and closed her eyes to concentrate, hands out a little and palms up. I felt the air move, rustling loose trash. When Storm opened her eyes again, they'd gone white.

"Shit." Jackie O whispered.

The winds sped up, whirling around us, and we started to leave the ground. " _Shit!_ " Jackie O said again, louder. I could see the strain on Ro's face, sweat glistening on forehead and lip. Christ, if she dropped us ... "You can do it, Storm," I said.

It was slow going, both because she was being extremely careful, and because she was trying to lift four people, not just herself. But necessity is a stern taskmaster, so she raised us two stories to the roof, then collapsed in my arms, panting. " _Fantastic_ job," I said, stroking her hair and holding her up while she got her strength back. Meanwhile I looked about, considering options. I wasn't sure that we were better off, but at least we were out of the way for the moment, and I could think about what to do next.

"You're mutants, aren't you?" Jackie O said, after she'd quit shaking.

"Duh," Ro replied, straightening up out of my grip, then asked, "What's your name?" to make up for the smart-ass answer.

"Annie," the other girl said as I left them to pad around the wall edge. I could still hear their conversation clearly up here in the night air, out of the racket below.

"I'm Storm. That's Cyclops."

"Storm? Your parents actually named you that?"

"Well, no. It's a nickname, sorta."

"Who's the other one? The Indian girl."

"I don't know."

"I thought she was with you?"

"Not exactly. Like we said, we came to find her."

"What's wrong with her?"

"She's unconscious."

"Duh," Annie replied, and Ororo laughed. "I meant what's wrong with her that made you come after her?"

"Her powers recently manifested and she doesn't know how to use them yet. Not safely. We came to help her learn, so she's not a danger to herself and others."

"Oh. Probably a good idea, after what happened in there."

They were silent then while I finished my scouting. As the girl Annie had said, both back and front were well covered, but the crowd was trying to push out and the bouncers had their hands full. They weren't paying much attention to what lay outside their immediate vicinity. I returned to the girls. "Okay," I said, "the plan is this: we move east over the next three rooftops - they're all about the same in height - then drop down into the alley and get out to the car, pronto." I glanced at our impromptu addition. "We can take you home if you like."

"Just get me out of this neighborhood and I'm grateful. This is nuts." She was studying the unconscious girl. "You know, I think she might be on wack."

I followed her gaze. I hadn't given the Indian girl more than a second glance. Now, I did. She was malnourished, and barely dressed. Not barely dressed like Ro, whose top was supposed to look like it might fall down at any moment, not actually do so. This girl was barely dressed in a thin tank, leather miniskirt, and sandals despite the cool spring night air. And she was sweating still, copper skin all flushed. I reached for her wrist, took her pulse. Way too fast. Pulling open her lids, I checked the pupils. Definitely dilated. Even in the dark, I could see that. "You're right. Looks like Angel Dust."

Ororo did a double-take. " _Crap._ Major bummer drug."

"Just what we need," I muttered. "A psi on wack. Talk about the mother of all bad trips. Well, as long as her blood pressure doesn't drop and she doesn't start convulsing, I'd like to keep her out of the hospital. It's probably not the best choice, but under the circumstances, I think it's wiser." Mentally, I sent, _Professor?_ Now that I had my visor back on, he could hear me better. I kept my eyes shut.

 _I followed the conversation, Cyclops, but have no better advice to give at the moment. You know more of this than I, it's why I sent you. Get yourselves to safety where you can place the girl under observation, twenty-four/seven until she comes out. I cannot tell how much she has taken, but if the dosage was high enough, it would explain why Cerebro is intermittently blinded to her. As you said, given her mutation, it is probably best if we can keep her out of the hospital, but take her if you think it necessary. I bow to your experience._

My experience, whoopee. What I wouldn't give not to have my experience. But even I'd never been stupid enough to take Angel Dust. _What happened back there in the club ...?_ I asked. _One minute, I was talking to Annie about vice cops, and the next thing I knew, illusions of them had showed up at the door. Seems a little too coincidental._

 _I agree, but at this point, can only speculate. Our new mutant was open to Storm's introduction until Storm mentioned mutant powers, then I felt her probe Storm's mind in self-defense. I could feel her, but not stop her. Right at that moment, Storm's main fear was of upsetting her further, not something from which she could form an effective hallucination. So it may be that she somehow managed to follow the telepathic link out of Storm's mind, through me, and into yours, where she picked up on vice cops._

 _So the illusion disappeared when Storm knocked her unconscious?_

 _No. I collapsed it. Once generated, her mirages appear almost to take on a life of their own, nor does she have to be conscious to create one. Keep that in mind. Her gift is very strong._

 _Yes, sir._ And blinking my eyes open again, I returned to the present. The girl Annie was staring at me like I'd grown two heads and I wondered if I'd been muttering my replies out loud again, like I did sometimes. Storm had gone off to the roof's east edge to consider the distance to the next building. I picked up our unconscious mutant and joined her, Annie following. "Okay," I said. "We need to get a move on, people." It was six feet across to the other side. I could make the leap but doubted Annie could. She was much too small, and God knew what kind of physical shape she was in. Not to mention that we had the other girl to carry. "Storm, are you up to it?" She just nodded and raised her arms to summon the winds, lift us across. No one below seemed to notice. And in this way, we covered three roofs and eventually got down into the alley beyond. Storm was almost falling off her feet by that point, but we weren't out of the woods yet. I handed her my keys. "Take Annie, get the car, and bring it around to pick me up. I'll stay with the girl." Three buildings away, the club still milled like a kicked ant-hill, and real cops had arrived. We'd better not try to cross the street with an unconscious body, and Storm couldn't pick up the girl and get her into the car; she could barely pick up herself. Better if she drove. I looked at Annie. "Help her. She's exhausted."

"Check," Annie said. She got an arm around Ro's torso and off they went, Ro trying to slip back on heels as they walked. A few minutes later, the Mercedes stopped in front of the alley where I was waiting, and Annie had leaned across to swing open a rear door. I hurried to get in, half flinging the unconscious girl across the back seat. Ro was moving even before I could close the door and it almost slammed on my foot from the momentum of her acceleration.

"Man, would you watch it?" I snapped.

"What? You want them to catch us? Annie, where's home for you?"

I kept an eye out the back window as Ororo followed Annie's directions to her apartment. So far, so good. No one was following. It turned out that Annie was a student at Vanderbilt University, and lived in what amounted to the student ghetto, if a private university like Vandy could be said to have such a thing. Ro stopped in front of Annie's building to let her out. "Thanks," Ro said.

"Thanks to you," Annie replied, bending down to look in the window and give us both an impish grin. "That's the most freakin' scared I've been in a long while, but the most fun I've had, too. You guys be careful."

"We'll try. And Annie," I said before she could get away. "Remember, not all mutants are out to hurt humans."

She gave me a funny look. "Who said you were? Not everybody buys into that media shit, y'know. As near as I could tell, the Sentinels did more property damage than mutants ever did. Fucking waste of tax dollars, if you asked me. Good luck, guys." And turning, she dashed up the stairs to unlock the door to her building and slip inside.

Well, I thought, people could surprise you. And maybe Magneto _wasn't_ always right. Normal humans and mutants could work together when they needed to.

* * *

 **Notes:** Regarding Storm's history . . . Millar confided in an interview that he's simplifying her conflicting comics background by dumping the goddess aspect to make her only a car thief, referencing her old comics history as a thief in Cairo. In issue #7, Colossus' quip suggests she's from Morocco. Millar further said that he hated the way her dialogue felt stilted in the classic comics, so he's assuming that she's been in the States at least since puberty to have acquired fluency with American slang. Issue #7 suggests that she might have been older when she came here than I indicate, but Peter was teasing her, so it's hard to tell. Scott's background is the same as the one I created in "Chocolate Milk." As always in comic canon, he's an orphan. His first name has never been given; I just kept the one I made up in "Micky Blue Eyes." "Miss Gredenko" belongs to The Police, found on _Synchronicity_ , and "As Time Goes By" by Herman Hupfeld was, of course, used in _Casablanca_. Storm's singing voice was remarked on as notably good in the original comics, and I've kept that. Yes, Dani Elk River is the same person as Dani Moonstar; please see my notes at the beginning of Part III to understand my reasons for the change.


	3. Dreams, Visions, and Nightmares (Scott)

"Storm, pull over, she's starting to wake up." Probably a good thing. It wouldn't be too keen to carry an unconscious girl into my hotel room. True, wealth could cover a multitude of sins, but I'd rather the hotel help didn't think I was abducting people.

"Pull over where?" Ororo asked.

"Find a nice big, quiet, _dark_ parking lot."

She glanced in the rearview mirror at me. "What are you going to do, Cyclops? Murder her and dump the body?"

"Don't get smart, girl, or I'll murder you both, and put you in the same shallow grave."

She laughed. "Just try, flyboy. I'll paddle your fanny with a lightning bolt."

It made me grin. Stupid adrenaline humor. No matter how many times your life gets interesting, there's still relief when 'interesting' is over. More or less. I had yet to explain to a girl high on Angel Dust why she was in the backseat of a Mercedes with complete strangers, one of whom had given her a bruised jaw.

Christ, Professor - tell me again why this is me and not Jean?

 _Because you need the practice, Cyclops._

The inner voice made me jump. _It was an idle thought, sir, not a real question_ , I sent back.

Mental bubble of amusement. _Of course. But sometimes your idle thoughts are more honest._ And he disappeared again. In any case, the girl was coming around. Her eyelids fluttered, then she was, abruptly, awake.

" _Wha'thehell!_ " And she slammed herself back against the rear door on the other side, hand flying to the handle to let herself out, but she missed her mark. Ro already had on the child protection system. She wasn't getting away that easily.

"Calm down," I said, my voice deliberately soft. "We're not going to hurt you. You're safe. I promise. Just listen to me, please. Give me five minutes."

She was shaking and still sweating. The headband around her brow was soaked, her hair damp, and her eyes completely dilated. Not good. Then again, she didn't have to be high to freak out at waking up in the backseat of a car with a man she'd never seen before. "I'm not going to hurt you," I said again, but before I could even finish, there was a knife out and shoved in my face. I dove sideways.

"Lemme outta this leather submarine, white man!" But her speech was so slurred, I could barely understand her.

"Hey, sister, listen to him, okay?"

"Shut up, you black bitch!" And the knife swung towards Ororo. I saw my chance, grabbed the arm and shoved it down, her wrist banging my knee so that her grip loosened. She dropped the knife. PCP made a user strong, but killed coordination. I slammed my foot down on the knife so that she couldn't get hold of it again. "It's kind of hard to put my thoughts together with a switchblade in my face," I told her. "I'm _not_ going to hurt you, dammit! Listen to me!"

She glared back, but the effect was spoiled by her continued blinking as she tried to focus past the drug. "Just listen," I said again, softer, though I'd be damn lucky if she could concentrate long enough to understand what we were saying to her. "We honestly aren't trying to hurt you. We got you out of the riot."

"What riot?"

"The one you caused," Ro put in. "With that illusion of the vice cops."

"What the hell you talking about!" the girl snapped and started to struggle at the door again.

"Ro - " I warned, even as I reached forward to make her stop. "Shhh. Listen to me." Did the girl not understand what she'd done? Maybe not. Her illusions weren't directly related to her body - like my eyeblasts - and up in the stratosphere like she was, maybe she didn't realize those illusions were different from the ones inside her skull. But how did I explain? The professor had said she'd freaked out the first time Ro had even mentioned mutant powers.

"There was a riot," I began, keeping my voice level, "at the club. People thought it was a vice raid, but it turned out to be an illusion, a mirage."

"Yeah? Like VR?" She appeared interested, in a vague way. If I could keep her concentrating, maybe I could keep her from going off into another rage where she might construct more illusions out of her own hallucinations. I really had no idea what she was capable of.

"Sort of like VR, except this wasn't a machine." I shifted and wet my lips. Here came the fun part. Feeling helpless, I glanced at Ro. She put a hand over mine where I'd been gripping the back of her headrest. "You've heard of mutants?" I asked, saw the girl's face turn immediately hard. Wrong approach. Dammit, where was Jean when I needed her? Maybe if I made it about us, instead of about her ...? "Ororo and I are both mutants. We have certain powers - "

But she seemed to have lost interest in what I was saying and leaned her head back on the glass of the window, patted her clothes absently. "Dammit, where's my jacket? I need my cigs."

"The jacket must have been left at the club," Ro said. "We had to get you out in a hurry."

The girl blinked. "Fuck it! That jacket had my good cigarettes!" Probably the laced ones. Superweed. "And my license. I need my fucking license!" She'd started to shake again and her hands moved about blindly, like she could make the jacket reappear out of thin air if she just wished hard enough. "Shit, what's wrong with my legs? They're a mile away, man."

"Huh?" Ro seemed wholly thrown by these conversational lefthand turns.

"Your legs are right here," I said, laying a palm on her knee. "Can you feel my hand?"

"No. Yeah." Absently, she ran a hand into her hair, mussing it badly around the headband. "I feel all spongy."

"It'll pass. Just concentrate on my voice, okay?" Wack wasn't LSD; I couldn't talk her down from a bad trip, but if I could keep her concentrating, I could keep her from going off into her own mind and freaking out again. "Can we talk to you some more?"

"Okay. Talk."

"Like I said, Ro and I are mutants. We each have unique powers, special things we can do. Ro can control the weather, and I have these eye blasts. Mutants are born with a special gene that usually manifests itself at puberty - "

I'd lost her again. She was clawing uselessly at the handle. "Heard enough about the freak show. Lemme outta here." Her agitation was increasing. "I said, lemme outta here! _Now_ , dammit!"

"Please, wait." I made calming motions but it did no good; she just clawed harder at the handle and started kicking me. "Man, just listen please!" I said.

"No, _you_ fuck off! _Neve'nêhesheve!_ I don't want no part of you, got that? Keep away from me, you and your chocolate bunny girlfriend."

"Fine!" Ro said, eyes white. The "chocolate bunny" line hadn't gone over well. "Just get out of the car and wander off down the street, high as a kite!"

"Ro, don't yell at her." We didn't want to upset her. Her brain wasn't working normally, right now. Peace and dark was what she needed. "Keep your voice down."

"Shut up, Cyclops. You had your turn, now it's mine." She lunged over the backseat to grab the girl by the wrist and yank her forward until they were almost eye-to-eye. "You'll be lucky if nobody mugs you, sister. Or rapes you. And the sad thing is, you're so out of it, you probably wouldn't even _remember_."

"Ro!"

She ignored me. "But then, you don't _want_ to remember, do you? If you remember, then you'll have to admit you're as much a mutant as we are. _You_ are the one who made the mirage at the club. And it's not the first time, I bet." The other girl was twisting, trying to get away, but Ororo is a strong woman. Even so, she couldn't do more than hang on. I weighed my options: leap in and hold down the girl, or stay out of it and hope Ro didn't push her into a real PCP rage.

"How long have you been on the run?" Ro asked, voice quieter. "How many places have you trashed with your mirages? How many people did you scare out of their wits? Maybe you haven't killed anybody yet, but if you don't learn to control your power, girlfriend, you're going to. I almost murdered a whole playground full of kids because I didn't know how to master what I could do. I almost _killed_ them? You get that? We're _dangerous_ , sister."

"I don't mean to be!" the girl was yelling. "I don't wanna hurt nobody!" She still twisted like a cat and was trying to bite Ro. I was afraid she was going to hurt herself, or Ororo. I had to put a stop to this.

Leaning forward, I grabbed her arms. "None of us mean to be dangerous," I said.

"I'm not a witch!" the girl was screaming, trying wildly to slap me and bucking to get free. "I'm not a witch! I'm not cursing anyone! I'm not trying to hurt anyone!"

"I know!" I said, getting hold of both her wrists finally in one of mine and pushing her back with my body against the seat. I put my free hand on her forehead, to hold her head still. Even so, I could barely contain her. PCP does that, pumps a person up to twice her normal strength. "You're _not_ a witch. You're _not_ a bad person. You're _not_ a freak. You're just a mutant. Like us. I know you don't want to hurt anyone, but you're going to, if you don't get some help."

We were playing this good cop, bad cop, but it was working. She'd quit fighting me, though she still sobbed a little. "I'm not a witch!"

"No, you're not." I glanced around at Ororo, who nodded to me, a little smile on her face. We'd gotten past the denial phase, at least. "You're gifted. Special. We can help you learn to control that, so you don't hurt anyone by accident ever again. Will you trust us?"

She shivered hard all over, but nodded, and I let her go. "I'm Scott Summers. That's Ororo Munroe. What's your name?"

"Dani. Danielle Elk River."

I smiled a little. "Welcome to the ranks of homo superior, Dani. Ro, take us back to the hotel."

By the time we reached the Heritage, Dani had sunk back into the PCP zombie-zone. "God, I am so hot!" she kept saying and once tried to peel her little red tank right off. Holy Christ. I gripped her wrists and yanked the top back down before Ro could get the car into the Heritage drive. No free show for the valets tonight.

"I know you're hot," I said, "but keep your shirt on! When you get up to our room, you can take a cold shower."

Getting Dani upstairs was an adventure. I was glad I'd tipped these people well the first time. Nobody said anything about the obviously high girl whom Ororo and I were half carrying up to our suite. She was dressed like a hooker, and I could guess what the hotel help thought we were going to do with her. When we were in the room, I let Ro take her. "Get her into the shower and cool her down. Do you have some clothes that will fit her?"

"I don't know," Ro said, studying Dani's figure. She's got bigger hips than me, and I'm taller, but I can probably find something.

"Make sure it's cool, or she'll try to take it off again."

She gave me a little, dimpled grin. "And you'd have a heart attack."

"I'm not used to naked women running around my hotel room, okay?"

"Ooooo, Scott. Where do you take your girlfriends, then?"

I glared at her as she retreated into the smaller bedroom with Dani in tow, then I collapsed onto the couch. Man, I was tired. _Mission accomplished, Professor_ , I sent in my head, but got no response. He must already have closed the link. Long term telepathic monitoring at this distance was a strain even for him. Removing my visor, I put back on my glasses. I needed something to drink, and food. Calling room service, I ordered cheese and fruit and lots of juice, and coffee for me. I'd eaten half the cheese before Ro re-emerged, alone. "I just put her to bed," she said. "She was asleep on her feet."

" _Asleep?_ " Going to the doorway, I glanced in. The girl was out cold. I wondered for how long. That wasn't the usual Angel Dust reaction, but a mutant mind was different from a normal one, and PCP acted a bit differently on everyone anyway. Turning back, I found Ro scarfing down strawberries. It made me smile. I'd ordered those because I know how she likes them. She'd ditched the black lycra dress for something simple and loose in a shade that might have been pale violet. She wears a lot of it. "You going to leave some for me?" I asked.

"You can have the cheese. The strawberries are mine. Rrrroww!" And she flopped onto the couch, head back, arms and wet hair spread out on the cushions. She looked as tired as I felt. But really, she'd done more work. I took a seat across from her. "You did good tonight."

Dropping her chin, she raised both eyebrows. "Oh, my! Praise from the fearless leader! I'm so flattered!"

I frowned down at a square of Swiss cheese in my fingers. "Am I usually that bad?"

"No. You aren't." I heard her get up and then she was kneeling down in front of me. She bit the cheese right out of my fingers and quirked her lips up. "You even complimented the Wolverine once. I heard you, so don't deny it." And she swallowed.

"He earned it."

She dropped back on the dun-dull carpet, hands behind her for support, and glanced off at the flowered curtains. Overhead track lights glowed on her pale hair. "Are you glad he's gone? I know he helped us, in the end, but I still don't trust the son of a bitch. He made my skin crawl."

And how did I reply to that? As Scott, or as Cyclops? "I don't like him, either. But I'm not sure that I don't trust him. The professor trusts him. And Jean. They're the telepaths. I'm the idiot who ran off to Magneto. Maybe you should ask if you trust me?"

Her eyes narrowed and she swung her face back to consider me. "Sometimes you piss me off, and sometimes you make stupid mistakes. But I trust you. I trust you more than I trust Professor X. And as for Magneto" - she overran my attempt to protest her distrust of the professor - "I was so mad at you at first, I couldn't see straight. I called you every rotten name I could think of, and then started over. We were all pissed, except for Jean. She asked if we really thought you could fire on us as enemies when you'd led and trained us as teammates? She said you'd rather die than betray someone who trusted you. So we talked about it after she left, and decided that the day you really betrayed someone, was the day the universe would end."

That touched me, on two accounts. First, that they did trust me that much. And second, that Jean had defended me. Given how she'd been acting towards me since my return, I'd never have guessed it. "Jean defended me?" I asked, just to be sure. "And she was right. The first thing I told Magneto was that I wasn't fighting the X-Men. I'd help him, but I'd never go into battle against you."

She grinned. "It's nice when some things in life are predictable." Then she flopped back on the carpet, arms out to the side. "I'm bush-whacked."

"Why don't you go to bed, then?"

"Why don't you?"

"Because one of us has to stay up and keep an eye on the new girl, and I had coffee. I'm too keyed up to sleep." I always was, after a mission. And I was still thinking about what she'd said a minute ago. " _Jean_ defended me?" I asked again.

She twisted on the floor and cracked an eye open. "Yeah, she did. Pretty vehemently, too."

I could tell Ro was amused. "You think I'm a fool, don't you?"

"No, Scott."

"Yeah, right. So why are you laughing at me?"

"I'm not. I'm amused, but I'm not laughing _at_ you, and I don't think you're a fool. I do think you're barking up the wrong tree, though."

"And that's not being a fool?"

"No. We can't always control who we get crushes on."

I stared off at the track lights over the window behind the couch, let it fuzz my vision as I thought about Jean, and Wolverine. Was that just a crush? "Crushes are something you get over. I haven't gotten over Jean for a year and a half."

"Some people are too stubborn to let go."

"Why do you think I'm barking up the wrong tree? You're on the outside of this little triangle. What do you see?"

"Honestly?"

I didn't answer immediately. Did I _want_ her honest opinion? Storm could be ruthless. But she was also perceptive. And maybe it was time I heard the truth. "Yeah, honestly."

"All right then. Jean's mutant power isn't TK, it's getting guys to fall at her feet."

I dropped my gaze to look at her. "That sounds like jealousy to me, not honesty."

"I'm not jealous." It was said with real seriousness, a slight frown on her face, which inclined me to believe her. In the bedroom, I could hear the other girl stirring in her bed. "I'd have to want what Jean has, to be jealous, and I don't. Sometimes I'm resentful, but not jealous. They're not the same thing. I want her to wake up and appreciate what she's got. She doesn't know what it feels like to be really hungry for days on end, or to run from the drug dealers, or to be spat on and called a nigger, or a thieving whore, or an Arab bitch - take your pick. It makes her cocky. She assumes everything's going to work out for the best, because , for her, it always has. And she strings people along on charm and the assumption that they'll love her. She's got that white girl sense of entitlement and it drives me fucking _crazy_."

"I'm white, too, Ro," I said, and ground my teeth together.

"Yeah, you're white. But you don't have that arrogance. You drive me crazy for different reasons."

"Gee, thanks."

I might have said more, except at that moment, Dani called out from the bedroom and we both jumped up to see what was wrong. Nothing, as it turned out. "She's dreaming," Ro said.

"Or hallucinating," I added.

"As long as she doesn't start hallucinating where we can see it, we're fine."

"I just don't want her to leap out a window because she thinks she can fly like you."

"Yeah, well, the only windows are out here." We returned to our seats, but Ro took a spot on the couch so that she could see through the doorway into the bedroom. "It's not the being white," she went on now. "I had plenty of white friends on the street. It's the entitlement crap that pisses me off. And that's why you're barking up the wrong tree, Scott. She's got you wrapped around her little finger and knows it. She doesn't have to do a damn thing but throw you an occasional bit of attention and you lap it up, follow her around like a lovesick puppy."

"Oh? And you don't flirt with anything that has a dick hanging between his legs?"

She blinked and I was immediately embarrassed for the crudity - I usually kept my less-than-polite thoughts to myself - but then she grinned. "Oh, I admit I flirt _shamelessly_. But I don't _assume_ men owe me anything. If they open a door for me, great. If they don't, I can open it for myself. And I never lead them on. If a guy really likes me, but the feeling isn't mutual, I keep it casual. Like with Hank. I don't feel what he feels. Maybe that'll change, but maybe it won't. I keep a little distance so he doesn't get false hopes. I refuse to be cruel."

"What about Colossus? Is what you do to him any different from Jean and I?"

She burst out laughing. " _Peter?_ Scott, open your eyes! Peter's the last guy at the mansion who'd be interested in me. _You_ need to worry more about Peter than I do!"

"Oh." Now I felt stupid. From the bedroom, Dani cried out again and I sat up a little, but Ro just glanced in the door and shook her head. Maybe Ro's laughter had disturbed her. "We need to keep it down," I said. "Bright lights, loud noises ... If she's already restless, it might set her off."

She was studying my face. "How do you know so much about drugs, anyway?"

"Because I was addicted to heroin before the professor found me."

"Oh." Her turn to be taken by surprise. Normally, I wouldn't have confessed that, but of all the students at the mansion, Ro was probably the one least likely to hold it against me. Even so, she didn't say anything for a full minute, then, "That's why Xavier sent you here, isn't it?"

"Yes. He had a feeling it might be a drug issue. So now you know a secret about me, and I know one about you, with the reading."

"Keeping tabs, Cyclops?"

"Not really." Well maybe I was a little, but not in the way she meant.

But she'd nodded, accepting my reply, and returned her attention to our previous conversation. "If you want to get the attention of a girl like Jean, Scott, you have to play hard to get. Like Wolverine. Why do you think she fell into his bed? The big mystery? Because he's an older man? No way, José. It was because he didn't make it easy for her. He let her know he was interested, but kept her guessing how much. Real cool cat. You were too easy a catch."

I snorted. "I thought she turned to him because he dared to tell her how he felt, and I didn't."

"Maybe that's what she tells herself."

"And me?"

"Quit pandering to her. Be her friend if you want - I think she genuinely likes you, as a person - but quit bowing to her like she was your personal Mecca."

I laced my hands together behind my head and leaned back against them, stared at the ceiling while I pondered what she'd said. Two weeks ago, I wouldn't have been interested in hearing. Now? I really wasn't sure what I felt for Jean any more. I'd loved her for so long, it had become another addiction. Which wasn't love, was it? "I'll think about it," I said.

"Good, you do that." Ro got up off the couch. "I'm going to take your advice and go to bed. Wake me in a few hours and I'll take my turn watching." She paused beside the chair I was sitting in and ran the back of her hand up my scratchy cheek, a gesture more of familiarity and friendship than of flirting. "Go grab a shower yourself. You earned it, Fearless Leader. It'll take me a few minutes to brush my teeth and get ready, anyway; I can keep an eye on her that long." And she dropped a kiss on the top of my hair, for all the world like she was my mother, and went in to bed.

Sighing, I let my hands fall and rose to do as she'd suggested, thought more about her advice as hot water beat over my head and shoulders. Maybe she was right. I had to quit pining after Jean; I was wasting my time. Jean didn't want me. Getting out, I dried off blind and fumbled for my glasses. The mirror was all steamed up. I took one of the towels and wiped it clear, stared at my naked reflection. How many times had I done this in the Savage Land, wondering what was wrong with me that Jean had chosen Logan? Worrying that my experiences on the street had marked me, like Cain. I wasn't man enough for her. What kind of game was I playing anyway, running around in black leather? Did I think it made me tough? Even a little twit like Toad knew better. I'd heard what he'd told me, in Croatia: "Whoever said that tight, little t-shirt doesn't make you look like the team pansy was lying." Not that he knew who I'd been, but he wouldn't have said that to Wolverine. Or even Peter.

And man, wasn't that a joke? The 'team pansy' was the guy who turned into organic steel. But this wasn't about truth; it was about perceptions. I tried to be tough because I knew I wasn't. Peter didn't have to try. And maybe that's why he made me uncomfortable. Around him, I still felt like the skinny shrimp I'd been at fourteen when Jack had first found me hustling pool.

Shit. Don't think about Jack.

I leaned knuckles into the bathroom counter and turned my face away. Jack was dead. He was never going to fuck with my head, or anything else, again. I grabbed underwear and flannel sleep shorts, put them on and went out. I'd wound up in the main bedroom after all because it had the single bed. I shoved my dirty clothes into a plastic bag to keep the stink off my clean stuff. The shirt had been torn a little from climbing out through the hole in the bathroom wall at the club, and I wondered if I could fix it, or if I'd have to ditch it. I liked that shirt.

"Neat as always, aren't you?"

My heart spasmed in my chest and I swung around, reached for the trigger on the visor I wasn't wearing and almost knocked my glasses off. Shutting my eyes reflexively for an instant, I fumbled with them as I stepped back against the far well. "What the hell are you doing here!" I shouted. "You're _dead_ , dammit!"

"Well, you certainly tried to make that so, but I assure you, rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

I finally got my glasses straight and dared to open my eyes. I was hyperventilating but couldn't stop, couldn't think past the panic. My vision tunneled as my whole will focused on the figure occupying the hotel bed. Jack Winters. He sat perfectly at ease, filing his goddamn nails like he'd used to do when he wanted to appear bored. He was half-dressed, chest bared to reveal his knife scars and the skull-and-crossbones tattoo. Street pirate. My own personal Blackbeard.

And Christ, that nailfile. I remembered only too well what he could do with that nailfile, and rubbed the underside of my arms where the scars were, only some of them from needle tracks. "Get the fuck out of here," I snarled, "Before I call hotel security and have you removed. Or maybe the police. There's probably a warrant for your arrest in Tennessee, too."

"Call," he said, and reached out to lift the phone handle, offer it to me. Cool, cool, completely cool. He'd always been so fucking cool. "You can tell them all about the space-case girl in the other bedroom, and how she's not a hooker for the night. And why I'm in here with my shirt off and you're even less dressed. Hmmm. I'm _sure_ that would sound convincing, eh?"

He looked up at me finally and I just froze, the little rat caught in the stare of a cobra. It had been two years but he could still immobilize me with no more than a glance. My breathing grew even more irregular and I couldn't take in air fast enough. It felt as if metal bands were crushing my chest. "Get away from me, you son of a bitch. _Get out of this room! Now!_ "

"Oh really, Scott. You've got to learn to improve your threats. I'm just _quaking_ in my boots." And he got up off the bed, came towards me. The nailfile was in his hand and he had that nasty smile that told me he was in a mood to see me bleed. I was already pressed up against the wall, couldn't go through it. I didn't have the strength to run, or the will. I never had. To this day, I couldn't believe that I'd found the strength to kill him.

"Get away from me." But it sounded more like a plea than an order. "Get away from me!" My eyes dropped to the nailfile, which he was turning, almost idly, in his hands.

"Where should we start? Behind the knees? Or inside the elbows? I owe you a great deal, boy. Weeks of recovery in a hospital. Over a year in jail and now a goddamn parole officer sniffing up my ass. Oh, yes. I owe you _a lot_." He raised the file right up to my eye level.

But something he'd said clicked through my panic-fogged brain. Recovery. In a hospital. "I saw you die," I whispered. "I saw your fucking _head_ explode." My voice was getting louder. "You can't recover from that! You couldn't have recovered. You can't be alive! You _can't_ be!

"What on earth is going on in here?"

A new voice from the doorway. My eyes shot in that direction:: Ro, in a robe drawn hastily over pale silk, her white hair mussed. "And who are _you_?" she asked Jack.

"Jack O'Diamonds, ducky." And he glanced back at me "Pretty little piece of cunt, Scott. Does she fuck well, or just give good head? Or maybe you give it to her? You had a lot of practice, didn't you? Oh, but I guess it was all with the wrong _gender_. That's why you're sleeping alone."

"Scott," Ro said in that soft voice that told me someone was about to get zapped, "who is this jackass? And what is he doing in our hotel suite?"

"He's ... dead," I whispered. My voice had faded almost to nothing, like my courage, like everything I'd built since I'd escaped Jack. All smashed into rubble. "He's dead."

Ro blinked. "He looks pretty alive to me."

"Oh, I assure you, I am." Turning, Jack headed for her, nailfile out. "I'll be happy to introduce myself at more length, after I get a little taste of what Scott's been keeping for himself since he got away from me. Come to papa, pretty, pretty girlie."

I tried to move, but couldn't. I was still pressed back against the wall, my palms splayed out on rough wallpaper as I watched Jack Winters approach Ororo. Her expression was wary, but not worried, and her eyes had gone white. "I'm going to give you to the count of three," she said, "to stop what you're doing, put that nailfile away, and get the fuck out of this suite. One."

"Oooo, I love a woman with _fire_."

"Two."

"Get away from her, Jack." It was my own voice, though how I'd found it again, I wasn't sure. I didn't sound very threatening. I sounded like a scared kid. "Get away from her, or so help me god, I'll spray your fucking brains all over the fucking wall again, you sick bastard."

"Scott, what did you just say?" Ororo had been backing up to give herself more fighting room, lightning starting to flicker over her form, but now she paused to frown at me. "Did I hear you say you sprayed his brains on a wall? And before, you said he was dead."

"I ... " Jack had almost reached her. "Get away, Ro! Run!" I started to pull my glasses off.

"Scott, don't! _Focus on my voice!_ What happened?"

"I killed him! Two years ago, I killed him!"

"This is just an illusion! It's not really happening, like at the club! Scott, look!"

I blinked rapidly, made myself focus on her. She stood, hands to the side, completely defenseless ... and Jack Winters was passing right through her.

A mirage.

"It's an illusion from Dani. I heard you shouting; it woke me up. She was tossing around in the bed, but I figured I'd better come see what was making you shout."

I stared - gawked really - as the much-faded image of Jack trying to stab Ro. "Make it go away, Scott," she said.

"How? I don't know how."

"Keep telling yourself the truth. You killed him. He's dead. He can't hurt you any more."

I whispered it to myself. She kept her eyes on mine. No judgement in them, no disgust. "He's dead," I said a little louder. "He's dead."

"He's dead," she repeated.

"He's dead."

And then he was gone, winked out of my life for a second time. But everything wasn't all better. I'd started to shake with bone-deep chills. My teeth were chattering, and I still couldn't breathe well. My back skidded down the wall and I wrapped my arms around my knees. Ro hurried over to drop down beside me, grip my upper arms. "Scott, listen to me. You're okay. Just breathe. You're having an anxiety attack. Look at me and breathe with me. Now in, now out. Now in, now out." I did as she said and she kept up the litany until I finally had some kind of control again, but I was so shaky, I doubted I could stand up.

Christ, this hadn't happened in almost two years. "Go check on the girl," I whispered. "If she's hallucinating, she might hurt herself while we're in here." Why she'd be hallucinating my personal demons, I didn't know, but it was the same as at the club. Maybe she'd tapped into me again because she had once before. Except this time, she hadn't lifted out a casual fear. She'd honed in on the one person, dead or alive, who could still take me apart at the seams.

Ro started to protest, but then nodded and rose to do as I'd bid. She must have realized that I needed a few minutes to pull my shit together. I considered reaching out to the professor's mind, but didn't. He must be fast asleep, even more exhausted than Ro had been. I could deal with this myself. I was a big boy now.

Yeah, right. I was sure acting like a big boy, all huddled up on the floor like a freakin' mouse.

I made myself uncurl from a fetal position and leaned my back against the wall, eyes closed, to concentrate on breathing and contain the sick feeling in my stomach. I wasn't going to lose it again. I heard Ro when she came back, and opened my eyes. She was carrying a glass of milk. "Sorry, it's not chocolate," she said, and handed it to me. I would've laughed but didn't have the strength for that, either. "Drink it. You'll feel better." I did as she said and tried not to think about what she'd just witnessed, what she now knew about me. This was a lot more incriminating than an addiction to heroin. The leader of the X-Men was an ex-prostitute and certified wimp. She'd never be able to take an order from me again with a straight face.

But there was no laughter in her expression now. "Are you okay?" Then she whacked herself on the forehead. "Jesus! What a stupid question! Sorry."

"I'll be okay," I said, answering what she'd meant. "And since when does a Muslim use the Christian God to swear by?"

"I grew up speaking English, Scott. Why would I swear in Arabic? Besides, I'm not a Muslim. My parents were." She plopped down next to me. "Allah and I have some issues."

Discussion of the incidental to avoid looking at the big white elephant in the room.

"How's the girl?" I asked.

"Sleeping now. I think she's really under this time."

"That's too weird," I said, rubbing my forehead as I tried to piece together what this meant. "PCP shouldn't knock her out, but maybe that's why she took it. I should call the professor, have him send Hank and Jean down here in the Blackbird. We need another psi to contain her. She's stronger than anyone thought, more than we can handle."

"Call them in the morning. She's out now, and you need to sleep, Scott. You're just - "

" - a fucking mess, I know. Take a good look, Storm. This is the true face of your 'fearless leader.' I can't even get my legs under me and I think I pissed my pants."

"You beat him," she said simply.

"No, you did. You figured out what was going on. I didn't do a damn thing but cower against the wall like I was fourteen years old again."

She didn't reply immediately, instead did the unexpected, reaching out to pull me to her, hug me tight. "You didn't piss your pants," she said. "Or I'd smell it. And Scott, how old were you when he picked you up? Fourteen, I bet? Some things are just ... past reason. You want to know another secret about me? I'm claustrophobic as all hell. Lock me in a closet and I just freak. Can't think, can't breathe, can't do anything but scream my lungs out. At least you beat him, two years ago, and again just now. That's brave."

"Yeah, right."

"Shut up, Cyclops. You're brave. I said so; it's a pronouncement. Now quit arguing with me." She pushed me back to glare, but not very seriously. There was a smile hiding behind it.

"How can you smile at me?" I asked, dazed. "Don't you despise me?" Normally, I'd have been too proud to ask, but just now, I had no pride left.

"Scott, you are such an asshat sometimes. Why would I despise you? Just because for a minute there, you needed some help to get a reality check? I told you, lock me in a closet and I'm just as bad. I _understand_. Besides, I thought we were the X-Men? Not Cyclops and the X-men. Or do you think I'm just your cheap backup singer?"

It made me smile. "You're definitely not that. You saved my ass tonight. Twice."

"Yeah, I did. And I probably will again sometime, and you'll save mine. Keeping tabs, Cyclops?"

"Not really." My smile widened, remembering our earlier exchange.

"Good. I'd have to hurt you, if you were. Now, are you going to let me help you to bed?"

"I guess." I handed her the empty glass of milk and she levered me to my feet. I was feeling better, but still extremely shaky. She got me to the bed and I collapsed on it. "What I asked, a minute ago, if you despised me ... " I paused, then blurted it out. "I didn't mean for panicking. I meant ... for what he said about me."

Maybe I was just picking at scabs, but I had to know.

Frowning, she sat down on the bed edge. The light was on and it made the slick fabric of her nightgown glisten. It was a pale color, probably more of the lavender she loved. I wished I could see it against her skin. I wished I could see anything that wasn't red. Even her hair ... I knew it was white, I thought of it as white, but it would forever be pink to my sight. Almost absently, I reached out to touch it, ran a strand through my fingers, and she didn't start or pull back. "I'm not sure what you mean." she said instead. "He was trying to get my goat, and yours, too. Why would I despise you for his stupid insinuations?"

She didn't know. She hadn't understood. I let go of the hair and rolled away onto my side. My glasses slipped a little and I pushed them back up. I needed to change into my night goggles. "Never mind," I said.

"No. Tell me."

"Never mind."

"Dammit!" She grabbed my shoulder and yanked me back so she could see my face. "You are such a pain in the ass sometimes, Cyclops! _Talk_ to me! Why should I despise you for what he said?"

I didn't know where to begin, so I stared at the ceiling instead of meeting her eyes. "The bit about having a lot of practice. At, um, sex." I swallowed, couldn't go on.

"Yeah, so? I have a little practice, myself."

"Not like mine!" I tried to make it light but it just fell flat. "I don't want to talk about this."

But I'd said enough; I could see her mind whirring. She has a good memory, as I'd observed, and now she pulled up the words that she'd obviously dismissed at the time as meaningless taunting. "With the wrong gender," she said now. "He said you had practice with the wrong gender. So what? You're gay? So's Peter. He's my best friend. You think I care?"

"I'm not gay."

She frowned. "Then what?" But all of a sudden, I could see the truth hit her. "Oh. You, um ... _You - ?_ " She looked like she couldn't quite believe it, the same expression as Jean's face had worn when I'd thrown the truth at her before I'd left. And Christ, could I blame Jean for not wanting to talk to me now? I was kidding myself if I thought she could ever love me.

"I was a hustler, yeah," I told Ororo. "Among other things."

Her expression didn't change, didn't transform into disgust. "I was a thief," she said.

"It's a little different."

"Oh, really? Some people wouldn't think so. What other things?"

"Huh?"

"You said, 'among other things.' What other things?"

"I was a thief, too."

Her lips tipped up. "That all?"

"I hustled some pool. That's how Jack found me. I was good at it. Unnaturally good, due to my mutation, even before it manifested. Anyway, he and some friends caught me one night after I left a pool hall, took me back to his place to work me over for conning them." I stopped as my brain went white. I couldn't remember that night or I'd lose any shred of control I'd pulled about myself. I started to shiver and Ro slipped down next to me on the bed to wrap her arms around me. Finally, I calmed enough to say, "After that, he put me to work. I was in his stable for about a year and a half. He gave me heroin, to keep me happy. If I tried to run, he cut me." I raised an arm and turned it to show her the faint scars on the underside from that nailfile, and the needles. "When my powers manifested, he decided I might be good for more than giving head. He taped my eyes shut and locked me in a closet, then took me out like some freakin' _tool_ when he wanted to crash a drug runner's hideout. He'd make me blast our way in, then kill them. With my eyes." I began shaking again. She was rubbing her hands up and down my arms and had dragged up the sheets over us both. "God knows how many people I wasted, Ro. Too many. I finally got up the nerve to kill the son of a bitch." I paused. Her hands felt good and blindly, like a pup, I turned towards her. She held me. "The professor found me the same night I did it. I was wandering around the streets, blind. He took me in and de-toxed me, taught me how to use my power for something besides killing things. I never want to kill again."

"Why were you on the street? A run-away?"

"Yeah, from an orphanage. My parents died when I was about eight. That accident I told you about, the one that damaged my brain? It was a plane crash. Everyone died but me. I barely remember anything before that, can't even recall my mother's face." I started crying and she ran her hands through my hair.

"Shhh. I've got you; you're okay. I've got you." For a long time, she didn't say anything else, just stroked my hair. My eyes were closed against the tears, but also because my glasses wouldn't stay on my face. She took them away and I could hear the click as she set them on the bedside table. Then she started to speak. "I remember my mother's face. I remember holding her hand, where we were caught under a ton of cement rubble. I remember when her hand let mine go, too. I remember staring at her dead face for almost a day before the emergency workers dug us out."

"I'm sorry," I whispered. I'd wound my hands in her hair, wrapped it all about my fingers. She had such beautiful hair. Why wouldn't Jean grow out her hair like this?

"That's why I'm claustrophobic," Ro went on.

"How old were you?"

"Nine. It was six months after we immigrated, the night of the LA riots after the Rodney King trial. They spilled over to other cities. Our restaurant was trashed and they killed my father. I heard the gun go off; he screamed. My mother and I were hiding in the back, off the kitchen. Somebody ran a car into the rear wall; collapsed half of it on top of us. I was too small to move the blocks. She held my hand for a long time, but bled out before the rescue teams got in."

Holy fucking Christ. What would it be like to watch your own mother die in front of you, and be unable to stop it? At least I'd been spared that. I pulled her a little closer, fitted her head on my shoulder and stroked her back. Two street kids who'd lived through hell. Kissing her forehead, I whispered, "I'll make sure no one ever locks you up."

Her grip on me tightened. "And I won't tell anyone what Jack did to you. I still think you're brave."

"So are you."

She moved her head up, mouth seeking. I couldn't see, but I could feel it as her lips brushed my chin and I tilted my head down until my mouth touched hers.

This - one part of my brain said - was a really bad idea. We were both vulnerable right now, both needing reassurance from touch, needing love of the unconditional kind. It was inevitable that we'd look to each other. That didn't make it a wise choice. It also didn't stop us.

For a long time, we did nothing but kiss, tongue-tip to tongue-tip; it was a revelation to me. Only a month shy of nineteen, yet I'd never kissed a woman like this. I'd barely kissed a man, and that only because it had been forced on me, hard and rough. But now, she stroked the skin of my back and arms with butterfly fingers as her tongue pressed lightly against mine. Sometimes she pulled away to mouth me, or suck thoughtfully at my lower lip. Languid. She never used her teeth. Who would have thought that simple kissing could set my body was on fire this way? I wasn't thinking of Jean at all. Only Ororo. Jamilah. _Jilah._ I whispered it to her at one point, her Arabic name, and she made a little murmur of consent. I had her wrapped up in my arms, and she had me wrapped up in her hair. And we weren't doing anything but kissing. Amazing.

I have no idea how long that went on, but she finally got impatient and found my arm, my wrist, pulled my hand up to her breast, all squishy under silk. I hadn't thought breasts squishy - the texture isn't self-evident - and it startled me. She'd moved her thigh between my legs to rock against me. Her breath was getting heavy; so was mine. I could die right now a happy man, with my hand full of breast and her thigh against my groin. I was so hot, and my clothes constricted. I wanted out of them, and to get her out of hers, so I dropped my hands to untie her robe by feel, blind without my glasses. Her fingers came around to help, but we just got in each other's way, which made her laugh a little. "Off, off, off," she said, and pulled the belt tie free, shimmied out of the sleeves and then wrapped her arms back around my neck to kiss me some more. I kept riding her thigh. "I need you," she was whispering. "I need you so much, Scott. Jean's an idiot."

Jean's name pulled me up from the edge, and I disengaged. I couldn't see. I suddenly needed to see, so I could think. "Where are my goggles?"

"What?"

"My sleeping goggles. I left them on the bedside table."

There was a pause and I could feel her twist in my arms, then her fingers on my face, my head, and the elastic and plastic of the goggles. I opened my eyes. Her face was flushed. Even behind rose quartz, I could tell, and her pupils were very dilated. Desire. For me. She wanted me, had said she needed me. I'd meant to stop this, but now seeing her face, couldn't. Here lay someone who wanted _me_. And I wanted her, too. I wanted white hair and brown skin and an arched Arabic nose. I wanted Jilah, not Jean. I wanted Ororo. I was free. No more addictions. This was my choice, a woman who understood my past and didn't turn away from me.

"I want _you_ ," I said, soft against her mouth. I wasn't sure she understood the full significance of that, but maybe she did. She pushed my lips open with her tongue and I rolled her onto her back, moved my hand up to her breast again, my knee between her thighs. Her hands were all over me, a dragging tickle of nails, but she never scratched or dug in. She was so very gentle, like I was precious, like I might break. Maybe another time, I would want her to be rougher, but right now, I nearly cried to have someone be that gentle with me.

I had no idea what to do next, beyond the theoretical, but she'd pulled my ass out of the fire twice already tonight. Maybe she could help me with this, too. I trusted her to help me with this, and not laugh that I didn't already know. "Show me what to do," I said, pulling away enough to speak. So she took my hand in hers and slipped it under the hem of her little nightgown, inside the elastic band of very damp underwear, through coarse pubic hair to the cleft and folds, the skin there so _warm_. And slick. She let my fingers explore, guided them a bit and drew in sharp breath when I found the magic spot. "Right there," she said. "Right there! Oh, God!" Her hips bucked against my hand as my fingers pressed on her nub of engorged flesh. Women got erections, too. How funny. But it also turned me on enormously and I wasn't sure if I was in heaven or hell as I dry humped her thigh through plaid flannel night shorts in the same rhythm my hand was using on her clitoris. My mouth had moved down her swan neck, past her collarbone to her right breast under silk. I didn't want the cloth in the way, but didn't want to stop, either, to get it off. She was moving like the tide beneath me, rhythmic and strong but still not rough, and she whispered my name, over and over. I took my mouth away to whisper hers. " _Jilah._ " It was my name for her now. " _Jamilah._ " Love me, want me, fuck me, only me. Make me whole again. I'd love her forever, if she could make me whole.

Suddenly she was pulling her underwear off, knees up, hands working quickly. "I want you inside me. Now."

She didn't have to tell me twice. She helped me get out of my night clothes and undershorts and I peeled off her nightgown, fastened my mouth on her breast again, bitter-dark chocolate nipple on mocha cream. I teased it hard with my tongue. Christ, she was so sweet. " _Inside,_ " she hissed, hands fumbling between my legs. She got hold of me and pumped hard with one hand as she drew light fingers with the other around the sensitive glans edge. I almost exploded right then.

" _Don't!_ "

"What's wrong?"

"Dammit, not yet!" I had to count to ten - backwards - to get hold of myself. "Don't touch me yet, unless you want me to come too soon."

"Okay."

I went back to sucking at her breasts, first one, then the other, flattened by gravity against her chest. Her legs were spread, knees bent, and she positioned me between them. Funny-awkward as this was, it felt right. Her hand slid down over my abdomen again to get a hold of my erection and angle it until the head touched the folded, slick skin of her hidden entry. "Right there," she said. "That's where it has to go. Push forward." Mouth releasing her breast, I did as she said.

Oh, Holy Christ.

Maybe I said it aloud, I don't know, but she laughed a little even as she was panting. "Don't move! Hold still. It's been a while. I have to adjust to you."

She wasn't the only one. I did multiplication tables in my head, just to keep from ejaculating on the instant. I was completely and totally enveloped. My hand could never be anything like this. Warm and wet and all around me. She was wiggling a little, to reposition herself and I gasped. "Sorry," she said. "You can move now."

Move? Just her wiggling had almost set me off. But my body knew what to do and I rocked in and out. Sweet, sweet, wet friction. Three strokes and it was all over. I thought I was bursting apart like a star gone supernova. Everything in my head and belly and groin exploded outward, and I made some kind of noise even as her legs closed over my hips, moving with me, driving me. "Don't stop!" she hissed, but I was past doing anything beyond what my body told me to do, lost in the grip of ancient instinct. I shoved her down into the bed and she writhed against me, thighs gripping my hips and her teeth closed on my shoulder. It hurt, but God, it felt so good. She was keening and pushing still, her fingers gripping my shoulders. The vise of her hips was tight, tight, and I could feel the walls of her vagina contracting around me as she came. This was everything I'd ever wanted. Perfect. I was normal. My body was normal and it could give me this.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," she murmured, as I pressed my face against her neck, breathed her skin. Her arms were locked around my back, legs still about my hips. She was laughing a little, or maybe crying. Flaccid now and wet, my penis slipped out of her.

"I love you, too," I said, trying to put the whole of what I felt in four words. Relief, gratitude, affection, devotion. We rolled so that I wasn't crushing her, but didn't let go of each other. I was so tired, and so elated, and so relaxed, that I slid right down into sleep, gripping her naked body like a life-sized teddy bear, a private fetish to ward off the nightmares. I was hers now; she'd claimed me body and soul. "Jilah," I whispered.

* * *

 **Notes:** For Scott's revelation to Jean about his past, see "Chocolate Milk." As noted in Part II, Dani Elk River is the same person as Dani Moonstar (Mirage, of X-Force). I realize the name change may cause some folks' canon demons to squeal, but Marvel is extremely uncreative in their last names for native people: Proudstar, Moonstar, Lonestar ... As a native person myself, that's always bothered me. A lot. So I ditched Dani's comics name in favor of one that sounds more authentic. Roll with it. Storm's quip about Jean's 'real' mutant power comes from _X-Factor #10_ , but was originally put in the mouth of Candy Southern. (Thanks Ken and Lelia.) Storm's claustrophobia is legendary. And Jack O'Diamonds, to whom Scott refers, was a part of his street background in the original comics. Incidently, the /i/ in Jamilah / Jilah is a long /i/, pronounced as an /ee/: Jeelah.


	4. Beasts, Men, and Mustangs (Ororo)

The son of a bitch fell _asleep_ on me. That was my first thought. My second was that he was desperately tired, and shaken, and needed the rest. He clutched me tightly, his nose buried in my hair. I wondered how he could sleep in those goggles, and remembered how he'd looked without anything, blank-faced, eyes closed against the force of the blasts. Younger. More like a boy on the edge of manhood than the grown-up he appeared most of the time with that perpetual scowl and the shiny gold-red of the visor. He was pretty. Which would embarrass him terribly, or annoy him, depending.

Kissing the bare skin of his shoulder, I extricated myself from his grip and watched him roll over onto his belly, too far gone to notice that he was in the wet spot. Then grabbing robe, nightgown and panties, I hurried out to the other bedroom, to check on the girl. She was still sleeping, thank God, so I slipped into the bathroom and shut the door, turned on the light and cleaned myself up.

By everything that's holy, what had we just done?

Dumb question, Ororo. You've got the evidence on three soaking wet balls of toilet paper. And I still had to climb into the tub to wash semen out of my pubic hair. I'd forgotten how messy sex could be. Condoms had certain advantages over the pill.

The real question was, Did I _regret_ what we'd done?

Simple answer to that. No, I didn't. Not for a minute. We probably shouldn't have done it, and there were a hundred good reasons why. We'd gotten carried away in the heat of the moment. It was hard to imagine Cyclops swept up in the heat of anything, but it had all been new for him, or as good as. And that had made it new to me, too. So we'd committed the classic error of letting our hormones run away with us.

And I still didn't regret it.

I couldn't wipe the silly grin off my face. Not the best sex - his fingers had been a little too rough and we were going to have to work on that problem of premature ejaculation - but here I stood, staring at myself in the mirror of an expensive hotel restroom and grinning like a schoolgirl who'd just been handed her heart's desire in the form of a prickly, moody boy a year younger than she was. Feeling punch-drunk, I leaned over the counter to press my lips against the mirror glass, as if the mouth reflected there were his. Silly, stupid, _infatuated_ girl. I'd thought myself too old and cynical for this.

And it was right in the midst of this private jelly-belly ebullition that I felt the sudden, invasive burst of the professor's presence in my head. _Storm!_

Surprise and guilt made me jump, and bruise my hip on the edge of the counter. No telling what images my brain had projected in those three or four breaths it took me to calm myself, but there was a momentary pause on his end of the mental connection.

Shit. Had I just let the cat out of the bag before Scott and I could even decide just what, exactly, we had here? I stopped that thought almost before it was formed.

 _Yes, sir?_ , I sent, trying not to sound rattled.

 _The girl_ , he sent back. _I laid down for a few hours, and when I woke, I found a sharp spike on Cerebro's monitor. Are you both all right? I tried to contact Cyclops, but he did not reply._

 _Scott's asleep, sir. He needs the rest. We had a little excitement._

 _Tell me._ All business, but I could sense a slight mental ruffle as his mind tried to sift my recent memories, without giving himself away.

The sneaky bastard. And Scott wondered why I didn't entirely trust Xavier? I doubted I could keep the man out if he really wanted to know what had happened, but I could make damn sure he wasn't taking the knowledge on the sly. I clamped down. Hard. _The girl - her name's Dani Elk River - passed out after we got back here. Scott thought that odd, but I don't know enough about Angel Dust to judge._

 _Cyclops has some experience._

 _I know. He told me._ Surprise from the professor at that bit of news. I wondered who else knew about Scott besides Xavier, and now me? Jean, probably. But Jean didn't know how his toes curled and his breath hitched when he was a heartbeat away from climax.

Bad thought. Did I want Xavier picking that up?

 _And?_ , Xavier prompted, sensing that I'd run off on a mental tangent.

 _And while she was asleep, I think she started hallucinating or something. Anyway, she got pretty restless. I'd laid down for a bit while Scott kept watch, but woke up to hear him shouting. I went to see what it was, and it turned out that she'd conjured an illusion of some guy named Jack._

A white wash of mental silence as that registered with the professor. _What happened?_ , he snapped then, harsh enough to startle me.

 _We ... got rid of the guy. Or Scott did. He kinda wished him away._

 _Show me. I must know exactly what happened, Storm._ Xavier could sense my reluctance. _Storm, I know all about Scott's past. You will not be revealing any secrets._

It wasn't Scott's secrets that I was worried about. It was my own, and ours. Xavier hadn't been here; he didn't know what had happened and I didn't want him judging us. What we'd done, we'd sort out together later, but that was for us to do.

 _Yes, it is._ The professor said into my mind. _Storm, I'm not inclined to interfere, whatever you may think. Your shields simply aren't strong enough to hide the memory of such an emotionally-charged event as what happened between you and Cyclops. Normally, I would honor your sense of privacy, and your pride. But this is not the time. I must know_ exactly _what our young friend is capable of._

So I let him see, and tried to keep myself from blushing. He examined the memory of Jack's appearance acutely, but didn't disturb what had happened after, beyond a quick check that Scott would be all right.

In fact, he seemed ... _phlegmatic_ about it. Almost as if he'd expected it.

And dammit, maybe he _had_.

 _He_ was the one who'd slapped us together in a car for a two day trip to Nashville when he could just as easily have bought us a pair of plane tickets on a commercial jet, if he really didn't want us to take the Blackbird. Undercover, my ass. We'd been nicely set up by a telepathic matchmaker, like a mutant version of _Fiddler on the Roof_. Was this Xavier's way of making sure that Scott didn't run off again? Was I a sop for the Fearless Leader, after he'd lost Jean to Logan? Or was Xavier trying to make sure that his least enthusiastic team-member (me) was irrevocably bound up to the field commander of the X-Men by the oldest tie in the book: love?

He'd done the same damn thing to Wolverine, too, now that I thought about it.

And it made me hopping mad.

 _You did this, didn't you?_ If it was possible for a mental thought to hiss, mine did. _You paired us up like some bored, old village grandmother. Did you give us both a mental nudge, too, to make sure that we fell into bed together?_

Startlement in the professor's thoughts, and a slightly sour edge, like distaste. He didn't answer me directly, which said plenty. _You and Cyclops have a great deal in common, Storm. I simply wanted to give you both the opportunity to discover it away from the others._

 _Do you have the information you need?_ , I asked, coldly.

 _Yes. And I fear that Cyclops is correct. This girl should be brought to Westchester immediately. I shall send Jean and Hank in the Blackbird; they should arrive within a few hours and meet you there at the hotel._

 _Fine. We'll be waiting. And professor?_ Stay out of my head _. No more nudges, no more pairing me up to poor, love-lorn mutant boys. I will pick my own bed partners, thank you!_ And I slammed my mind shut, or did what I hoped would feel like that to him.

Spoiled. It was all spoiled. Everything I'd been feeling, all the bubble-bright magic, curdled like old sour cream. How could I know that anything I felt for Cyclops was real? Xavier had thrown us at each other and we'd each been too desperate for love, in our own ways, to see what he'd done. I sat down on the bathroom floor and just cried.

It was Dani who found me there, an hour or two later. I heard her moving around in the room beyond, and knew that I should get up off the bathroom floor but couldn't quite manage. She opened the door and blinked down at me. I'd quit the hard bawling, but sniffled still and knew my eyes must be all white and my nose a mess. There was a huge storm brewing outside; I could hear rain beating on the window glass of the main suite. I still couldn't control the effect of my moods on the weather, and it bugged me. Maybe that was another thing that attracted me to Cyclops. He was a master of control. Usually.

Dani didn't seem in good shape herself, unsteady on her feet, black hair dull and stringy, and so skinny that elbows, wrists, and cheekbones stuck out. But at least her eyes appeared normal now. I waited to see what she'd say to the woman who'd decked her into next week, then yelled at her in the car. The moment of truth.

"Hi," was what she said. "You look terrible."

"So do you."

"But I know what my excuse is. What's yours?"

I had no idea what to say, so I just rested my chin my arms over my drawn up knees, and shook my head. Everything was so big and complicated all of a sudden.

She settled down on the carpet in front of me, toe-to-toe, shaky still, but at least she had her coordination back. And with the effects of the drug faded, she no longer appeared hostile. Just wary. "You and your boyfriend have a fight?" she asked.

"No. He's asleep. And he's not really my boyfriend."

She wiped a copper-brown hand over her face. "So what is he?"

"A teammate. A friend." A mistake?

She looked hard at me. "Teammate?"

I told her about the X-Men, and Xavier's Institute, while she washed her face and tried to put herself in order before Hank and Jean got here. She listened without interruption, and I found myself rambling. I was waiting for her to ask questions, while she was waiting for me to shut up long enough to let her do so. But I realized that only later, one of those funny culture-clashes. I knew I should go wake up Scott, but couldn't face him right now. I used chattering to Dani about life in New York as an excuse, and when she finally retreated into the shower, I puttered about getting dressed, and chose my uniform out of an instinctive need to feel more official, to create a little distance between myself and the man in the other bedroom. I wanted us to be Storm and Cyclops just now.

Henry and Jean arrived before I expected them, as it was the wee hours of dawn. But Xavier must have bundled them into the plane half-asleep, even as he was talking to me. God knew where they'd left the Blackbird, maybe on the roof. Dani had just gotten out of the shower and was putting on some of my spare clothing when a knock came at the suite door. I let in Jean and Hank while I pulled on the boots of my uniform. Still not in tip-top shape, Hank collapsed on the couch immediately and I gave him a big welcome hug that hiked both his eyebrows and made him grin. But I was just inexpressibly glad to see a friendly face, one which didn't involve a freight of complications. Meanwhile, Jean was introducing herself to Dani Elk River, who received her with that same impassive politeness that she'd worn since waking dazed-but-sober, as if she were reserving her opinion about us all until she saw more.

It was in the midst of these greetings and introductions that Scott came out of the main bedroom, probably woken by our noisy chatter. He was out of sorts, and in a mild state of dishabille, and his entry made everything awkward. I couldn't look at him, and Jean and Hank couldn't stop looking at him, bare-chested, hair a mess, but with his visor on. Dani simply watched. Rather than be overwhelmed by this suddenly doubled number of strangers, it seemed to relax her, as if she were used to crowded rooms and jumbled conversations even at four in the morning, which, she told me later, she was, on the reservation. It sounded a bit like my childhood in Morocco, when my parents had frequently entertained until the wee hours. No one in the Mediterranean ever started to eat supper until ten o'clock, anyway.

"So how did the professor know to send you?" Scott was asking Jean, who, for the first time since his return, hovered at his right elbow as she'd used to do.

She nodded to me. "He talked to Storm about what happened." She was trying to catch his eyes behind the visor but he'd turned to look at me instead, and disconcerted, I looked away, asked Henry if Bobby had already left to visit his parents. I wanted to tell Scott what Xavier knew, and what he'd said - and that the old man had played us against each other like chess pieces - but not here in front of the others. Whereas just a moment ago, I'd been afraid to confront him, now all I wanted was five minutes alone with him. And we weren't going to get it.

Jean seemed in a hurry to move us along. She asked me if I was packed - yes, I was - and then floated my luggage out of the smaller bedroom under the consternated stare of Dani. Jean likes to show off. Cyclops, she said, would have to close accounts at the hotel in the morning and drive the car home alone. I knew damn well that the car would probably fit in the Blackbird, and we could check out automatically from our room, but it was clear that Jean wanted to separate us. Despite what the professor had told me earlier, that he wouldn't interfere, had he decided we'd gone too far? Scott kept glancing at me, taking in my uniform and the way my eyes avoided his face, and I knew he was reaching conclusions that he didn't like any more than he liked being ordered around by Jean. He grew more brittle by the moment, until I thought his back might turn stiffer than Peter's at its steeliest.

Five minutes. All I needed was five minutes. But Hank was hauling himself to his feet and saying something witty and charming to Dani as he ushered her out the door. Jean elevated my luggage after, turned to me. "Ready? We need to get her back as soon as we can."

Scott just stood there. He still didn't look like he was entirely awake, but I suspected that was an act. For a limited number of roles, Scott is a consummate actor.

I left my purse. In a calculatingly flustered rush to get on my jacket, I surreptitiously left my purse sitting on the suite couch. Two hallways away, I 'noticed' in a stream of curses and told them I'd join them at the plane, sprinted back for the suite. I doubt I really fooled anyone, but it was just good enough to leave them unsure.

I met Scott in the hallway. He'd seen the purse and come to bring it to me, either because he was the only one who'd thought I'd really left it by accident, or because he'd needed to see me one more time. I turned a corner and ran right into him. "Ro!" He grabbed me to keep me from falling, but didn't let go when I'd caught my balance. "Jilah?" He whispered it soft, and his hand came up to brush my cheek.

But right now, the familiarity bothered me and I stepped away, unconscious answer to his half-voiced question. He moved back as well. "Your purse," he said, and held it out.

This is it, Ororo, I told myself. The five minutes I'd wanted. And I didn't have any idea where to begin. Or maybe I did, with the most important thing, and it wasn't the sex. "I didn't call Xavier behind your back, Scott. He read a spike in Cerebro and contacted me. He tried to contact you first, but you were asleep. He took the whole thing right out of my head, said he needed to know what she was capable of, said he already knew about your past. I didn't tell him."

"He did know." Scott looked away to run a hand through his hair. He'd put on a t-shirt which advertized some Mexican restaurant. It was black, of course. If it was the last thing I did, I'd get that man into something that wasn't grey or black.

"He knows the rest, too," I said, soft.

"Man!" he dropped the hand. "That's why they're taking you back without even giving me a chance to get my head together! We are in deep shit."

"It's not - " I broke off, sighing. "Maybe I should go." Part of me would be relieved to escape him because I was so confused about what had happened, but part of me wanted to stay right here, go back to bed and wake in his arms. "Xavier's not mad. At least, that's what he told me. _He did this on purpose,_ Scott. Think about it. He put us in a car alone together for two days, when we could have flown. He didn't even deny it. I called him on it, and all he said was, 'You and Cyclops have a great deal in common, Storm.'" I enunciated it in the professor's cultured, New England tones, then got to the heart of it, the part that had upset me so much. "How much of what happened was us, and how much was _him_? It wouldn't surprise me if he knew damn well that girl would push one of us to a breaking point. I don't want him arranging my love life!"

Scott seemed a little stunned, but only for a moment. For all his distaste of game-playing, wheels within wheels are something his strategist's mind comprehends. He hates to be manipulated even more than I do, and after witnessing the mirage of Jack tonight, I understood why. That bastard had twisted Scott into one emotional contortion after another.

"So what you're saying," Scott asked now, "is that you don't really feel anything for me? It was just the professor?"

Oh, shit! Of course he'd take it that way; he always doubts himself. "No!" I practically shouted. "That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that I want to figure it out for myself. I can't ... trust what happened here. I can't trust that it was real."

"You don't trust me. My feelings."

"No! God!" How could a man so smart be so dense? I felt like stamping my foot in frustration, as if I were four years old, and outside, thunder rolled again. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on controlling myself, ignoring the sick little knot that had been lying in the pit of my stomach ever since I'd realized that the professor had set us up. "I don't trust the situation. Would you please think about it? I just - We need to get some distance from each other for a day or two, see what this is." If it was real, it would still be there when he got back. "It's better if I go with them."

For the first time I saw a real expression cross his face - pain - and I reached out to touch him, to soften the words, convince him that I wasn't rejecting him, just needed to think. But he backed away. The cool mask had slipped down into place again. He was Cyclops. "Fuck you," he snapped, and turning, stalked away down the hall.

"Scott! _Scott!_ " He didn't stop, and I blew out in frustration. Was I being unreasonable, or was he just being dense? " _Tabban! La asta-tee' fahm alrijal!_ " I'd never understand men.

"Are you coming? Or maybe you'd rather chase after him like a lovesick school girl?"

Turning, I found Jean Grey leaning up against a wall, arms and ankles crossed in a posture very reminiscent of Scott, and my frustration with him swung easily to her. "Stay out of this. It's none of your business, _Marvel Girl._ " I turned her code name into the jest it sounded like and probably was, knowing Jean's quirky sense of humor.

"None of my business, huh?" She pushed away from the wall with her shoulder. "It looked to me like a little lovers' spat between the leader of the X-Men and a fellow team-member. I'd say it's my business if it affects the team."

I brushed past her. "It won't." I should have left it at that, but couldn't resist a little tit-for-tat. There was too much anger in me and nowhere productive for it to go. "At least we didn't trash a very expensive hotel room," I said over my shoulder. "We have a little more control than that."

So I'd known it wouldn't win me any brownie points with her, but I never expected her to grab my arm and swing me into a wall. She could have done it telekinetically, but I think she enjoyed the physical release the same as I'd enjoyed baiting her.

We really do not bring out the best in each other.

"Look," she said, "I don't know what happened between you two, but I haven't felt Scott this upset in ages. Whatever you did to him, be sure, I'm going to pay you back for it, bitch."

Furious, I knocked her hand away. "I didn't do anything to him." Well, that certainly wasn't true. I'd fucked his brains out less than four hours ago. "He _is_ upset, and for some very good reasons, but I didn't cause it. Our new recruit did. Got that? And I think Xavier _knew_ she was going to, so if you want to blame anyone, blame the professor. And anyway, you have _no right_ to play protectress for Cyclops. You're the one who drove him off to the Savage Land in the first place. If you hadn't jumped into bed with the Wolverine - "

"Shut up!"

"Truth hurts?"

Stepping forward, she got right in my face even though she was shorter by several inches. "Listen well, Storm. Scott is my best friend and has been for almost two years. _Nothing_ will change that. Not Wolverine. And not some two-bit interloper like you. Wolverine isn't even in the picture any more. If I _never_ see his face again, it'll be too soon. Scott and I - We'll talk about what happened. But I'm not going to let you wriggle your way between us like a poison desert snake. What I saw back there was Scott hurting because of _you_ , not for something the new girl did."

And maybe it was true, but I was hurting, too, because of him, because I wanted to think he might really love me, and I might really love him, but I couldn't be sure, and that pissed me off even more than her insinuations about my motives. "You weren't there," I said. "You have no idea what happened unless you steal it out of my head. Or his. It's _our_ business. But I'll tell you this, it had _nothing_ to do with you, except maybe that I was there and you weren't because you made your choice three weeks ago. You threw him away for Logan, and if it didn't work out with the Wolverine, well, that's your problem, isn't it? Maybe you picked the wrong guy. Your loss, my gain, girlfriend." I stalked away.

 _It didn't look like your gain to me,_ she said into my mind. I didn't reply. The hell of it was, she was right.

* * *

Hank tried to talk to me a few times from the co-pilot's seat on the trip back, but the attempt at friendliness fell flat in the icy atmosphere that existed now between Jean and I. The Indian girl had curled up on a rear bench and fallen asleep; she'd been out even before we'd returned. When we arrived at Westchester, Jean shut off the engines and unstrapped herself, said to Hank, "Would you please take care of shut-down, Henry? I need to get the girl to Charles."

"I should go with her," I said. "She trusts me." Well, more or less.

"We don't need you," Jean replied without even looking at me. "You'll just be in the way." A pause, a deliberate attempt to soften her voice. "Why don't you go get some sleep? This will be a long, telepathic ordeal." And she roused Dani, getting her off the plane. I collapsed on the back bench that Dani had just occupied, elbows on my knees, and sighed.

As soon as she was gone, Hank left off checking dials and switches to settle down on the bench beside me. "You wanna talk about it?"

I did want to talk, but not to him. To talk would mean telling Hank things which were Cyclops's private business, and other things that would simply hurt him. I studied his patient face. He was handsome enough, if one ignored the hairiness and the crouch. His features had fine angles, and occasionally turned up a wonderful smile. His life hadn't been peachy, either, but he always had a smile for me. So I found a smile for him and patted his hand. "Thanks, Hank, but right now, I think I just want to sleep. I've managed to piss off our fearless leader and his little deputy both inside ten minutes. I think that's a new record even for me."

Chuckling, Hank turned his hand up to grip mine. "That's you, Ro. Always stirring up trouble." Then his face turned serious. "I know you and Jean don't get along any too well, and you and Cyclops are even worse, if possible, but they're good people. Cyke just isn't adept at expressing himself unless it has to do with tactics or engines." He grinned. "You know enough about the latter, you guys ought to get along famously." God, if he only knew. "As for you and Jean, you're just too different, but too much alike in all the wrong ways."

Sighing, I knocked my head against the interior metal wall. He was simply trying to be helpful, but his advice was next to useless and I was too unsure of what I felt to explain. "Thanks, Henry." I stood up. "Good night. I'll see you in time for dinner maybe." And I looked around for my suitcases, glad the big one had wheels. Strong Hank might be, but right now, I didn't want him straining himself, so I adamantly refused his help and lugged them down the stairs.

"Hey, Ro!" he called after me before I could go three steps. I looked back to where he sat on the top stair. "If you think you can get up in time, maybe we could, um, go into town for dinner. I mean, if you'd like to get out of the mansion, maybe? Not be around Jean? Ah hell!" He pulled off his little glasses and rubbed his eyes, then looked at me again without them on. He had such bright blue eyes. "I'd like to take you to dinner, if you'd let me."

I blinked. Had he just asked me for a date?

Yes, he had. Henry McCoy had finally asked me for a date. He was sitting there, waiting to see what I'd say, expecting me to turn him down. One of his hands was clenching and unclenching, and without the glasses, I could see those bright eyes, and they were scared.

God, this wasn't freaking fair. I couldn't turn away two men in two hours. First Scott, now Hank. Hank's right fist still opened and closed convulsively and I couldn't stand here like an idiot. The longer I waited, the more rigid his expression became. So I smiled and blew hair off my nose, flung the rest over a shoulder. "I'd like that, Hank. Dinner would be nice." It was just dinner, I told myself, not a marriage proposal. And I've never seen a man smile wider. Except maybe for Scott, when I'd lain under him and said that I loved him.

Dammit, girl, don't think about that.

After all, Hank had a glorious smile, too, and he shared it with me a lot more often. It helped that the professor wasn't shoving him down my throat, either. "Shall we leave about seven?" he asked.

"I'll see you at seven."

* * *

It was Peter, of course, who spelled out my idiocy in no uncertain terms the very next morning. "Let me get this straight. You're in love with Cyclops - "

" _Maybe_ in love," I stressed.

"Maybe nothing. You're in love with Cyclops, but you went out to dinner last night with Beast? Are you nuts?"

"God! Probably." I flung myself down on my bed and stared off at the poster of my corvette. The curtains beside the open window blew a little in the spring breeze and morning sunlight fell on my face in butter-rich squares, dazzling me. "It was just dinner," I said.

"Yeah, and he's going to ask you out to dinner again, and then what'll you say?" Peter returned his attention to changing the strings on his classical guitar. Why he feels compelled to do guitar maintenance in my bedroom, I have no idea, but I'm always stepping on bits of nylon from trimmed strings, or finding paper towels damp with lemon oil from his shining it. Very annoying.

"I'll probably say yes," I replied.

"And how do you intend to explain that to Scott?"

"I don't think Scott's going to be talking to me, when he gets back."

"Well, I sure wouldn't, if I came home to find my lover going out with another guy. Hell, if Cyclops had hopped into _my_ bed, I'd be figuring out ways to tie him up there permanently, not going out to dinner with Beast."

That made me laugh. Peter would never say things like that to anyone but me. However ... "He's not my lover, Peter."

"Okay. What do _you_ call the man you have sex with?"

" _Had_ sex with. Past tense. And it was only once. We got carried away."

He just looked at me. "There's a first time for everything. I'd say it's 'had sex with' and 'will have sex with again,' as soon as you quit jumping at shadows and figure out how to let Henry down gracefully." Then he unrolled another string. "Y'know, I think Professor X has a point. You and Cyclops do have a lot in common."

"God! Not you, too!" I rolled off my bed to stalk out and leave him there. I wound up in the hanger bay, where Henry was working on the plane. Climbing up the ladder onto the wing, I made my way over to join him where he was working on a panel. Seeing me, his face cracked into a wide grin. "Good morning, sunshine."

I settled down next to him on the skin of the plane. "Good morning yourself. What are you tinkering with now?"

"Just checking the air breaks, flaps and lift-dumpers. Routine maintenance."

"How'd you get up here, anyway? I thought Jean told you to lay off too much climbing around."

He craned his neck left, then right, even peered inside his Hawaiian shirt. "Don't see Jean hiding anywhere." And with a smirk, he pushed his glasses up his nose and went back to work. "The plane has to be kept up. Jean flies it, but hates to work on it. Scott isn't here. That leaves me."

"Teach me; I'll help."

He blinked in surprise. "You're serious?"

"Yeah, I'm serious." I started to say that I'd asked Scott to teach me to fly, but decided I wasn't going to open that can of worms. I suspected any flying lessons, or reading lessons, were out of the question now, and I ran a palm over textured black titanium. A Northrop B2 Stealth Bomber. Not something a small-time car thief could expect to lay hands on every day, much less get her hands into the guts of. "She's so elegant."

Henry was still watching me. Then he shook his head and laughed a little. "It's the electronics I get excited over, but you drool at the design."

"Yeah, I know. I'm a girl for forms. Something like this ... " I sighed. "Can you imagine being able to say, 'I designed that plane; she's mine'?"

"John Northrop can. The whole 'flying wing' idea is his; he called it the greatest achievement of his life. Too bad he died before he saw more than the early stages of the prototype for this baby." But he was smiling. "Come on. I'll show you what's involved in her upkeep. Scott'll be thrilled to have another pair of hands to help out."

We got so involved that I didn't even realize Scott had gotten back until we both went upstairs to clean off the grease. Not that I actually _saw_ Scott. He'd gotten home, dragged in his bags, and been sent upstairs almost immediately to a little-used section of the mansion to finish detoxing the girl Dani, and do drug rehab in the process. It was funny to think of Cyclops counseling anyone, but he'd been through this himself, even if coming down off heroin wasn't the same as dusting off PCP. Jean would be monitoring them now and then, and Xavier had placed psychic barriers on Dani's mind to prevent her from lashing out if she had a flashback, and similar barriers in Scott's, to prevent him from being used as hallucination-fodder again. But the professor still gave explicit instructions to the rest of us to stay away from that area, and away from the two of them if we saw them out on the grounds. He didn't want anyone near Dani Elk River who wasn't a telepath, Scott excepted. Of us all, Scott was best equipped to deal with her, both for his personal experience, and also his physical strength. He could tackle her if he needed to. And a few times, he probably needed to. We all heard her screaming one night until about five in the morning.

Normally, they'd have put her into a professional detox unit, but given her mutation, that was too dangerous, and Xavier had an advanced degree in psychology along with certification to practice in the State of New York. They weren't flying blind. The fewer people involved in this case, the better. It would take some time, too. Xavier said the body stored PCP metabolites longer than the metabolites of any other drug. They were trying to flush out her system as quickly as possible - lots of water, lots of complex carbs, and lots of exercise - but even so, we didn't see them except at a distance for 12 days. And that was just to get her body mostly clean.

In the meantime, Henry and I niggled around with the plane and spent a lot of time together, while Peter watched in annoyance. I knew he thought I was making a mistake, and maybe I was. I'd told Scott that I didn't lead men on, and I hadn't been lying. I'd always despised girls who used boys, or engaged in pity dating. But what was I doing now, if not that very thing? Sometimes life got complicated, and the best of intentions didn't always yield the best results. I hadn't intended to date Henry, but I was dating him now, and I did genuinely like him, cared about him. So I was going to give him a chance. If nothing else, I'd learned to be less judgmental about how people might find themselves lying in the beds they'd made.

During those twelve days, only one event of any significance occurred. On the fourth day after I'd gotten back, the professor called me into the library. "Have a seat, Ororo." Then he puttered about, making me wait to see why he'd called me in there and thus reminding me of my place, and of the debt I owed him. I recognized the tactic, even as it worked on me. By the time he'd quit doing whatever it was, I'd begun to fidget. "I'm well aware that you are less than pleased over the outcome of the Nashville mission," he said.

I didn't feel like playing his games. "I'm pleased that we found Dani. That _was_ the mission, as I understood it, professor. As for the rest, can you blame me? I don't like being manipulated. I'm here to learn to control my powers, not be handed off as a consolation prize to the teacher's pet, to keep him tame and malleable. That's not fair to either of us."

He just eyed me while I studied the bookless walls and complex, blinking machinery of Cerebro. "You are," he began, "a woman who prides herself on blunt speaking, so I shall be blunt. Yes, I sent you and Scott by car to Nashville in the hopes that the two of you would become better friends. At the mansion, you were getting on one another's nerves, yet I also knew how much you shared, both in your temperaments, and your previous experiences. You simply needed to be removed from prior friendships and habitual escapes, to deal with each other afresh. However ..." And here he paused. I turned to look at him. His eyes were blue, like Hank's or Peter's, or even Bobby's, and it struck me suddenly that all the men in this house had blue eyes, except Scott. What a trivial thing to notice at the moment.

"However," I finished, "you didn't expect us to become quite such _good_ friends? Is that it?"

"You should make up your mind, Ororo. Do you think that I wanted you together, or that I want you apart?"

It's so damn annoying when someone else catches you in your own inconsistencies.

"Whatever you think," he went on, "I had no particular expectations in that regard. You are both over the age of consent and I was _not_ playing matchmaker. I simply had a hunch that if given half a chance, the two of you would get along famously, to use a cliche. I'm sorry if you perceived my intentions as more comprehensive than they were, but I assure you, I had no ulterior motives." He looked off. "Nor did I have any idea of what Dani Elk River was capable, or I would have sent Jean with Scott."

The professor rarely erred so badly; I was sure it annoyed him when he did. Yet, and whatever denial he made of ulterior motives, I still didn't trust the son of a bitch. "Why me?" I asked. "Aside from trying to get Scott and I to spend some quality time together, you must have had another reason. You sent him because he knew about drugs. So why me?"

"Come, Ororo, you're a bright girl. Why do you think?"

"Because I'm Berber. Black. You wanted to show her that we're a politically correct little multi-cultural family here."

He smiled faintly. "I won't say that the color of your skin had no impact on my choice, but had your and Jean's life experiences been reversed, I'd have sent Jean without a second thought."

"You picked me because I'm a street kid?"

"Precisely. Always choose the best tool for the job at hand. You may go, Ororo."

Summarily dismissed.

Ticked again, I rose to leave. "Oh, Ororo," he said, before I could get out of the room. "Talk to Scott when he becomes available once more. He's very confused right now."

"He's not the only one," I said, and slammed the door.

 _You and I both know how deeply you care for him,_ the professor sent. _But he doesn't._

Damn the man. _Stay out of my head!_ , I mind-shouted back.

* * *

Late in the afternoon of the twelfth day since Scott had gotten back, he and Dani Elk River finally emerged from their detox isolation. Three of us were hanging out in the den. I was pretending to read the newspaper classifieds while Henry brushed my hair and Peter played his guitar. Or really, I _was_ reading as much as I could. I'd been practicing, but it was hard to practice with no one to correct my mistakes. Classifieds were easy; I could often guess what something was supposed to be, even if I couldn't read the word. We heard a noise at the door and all looked up to find Scott standing there with the new girl. "This is the den," he told her. "Along with three of the couch monkeys who live here."

Surprised, but feeling responsible for her welcome, I smiled and rose. "Come on in. We won't bite, and Beast had his rabies shots last week anyway." Hank thwacked me lightly as Dani came down the steps into the room, looking about herself at the vaulted ceiling, decorator plants, and great arched windows in stark contrast to the dartboard, crumb-messy couch, empty pop cans, and Nintendo controllers abandoned the floor. She wasn't so thin now, and there was a little muscle as well as meat on her bones.

"You're Ororo," she said, turning back to me. "I remember you from Nashville." She glanced then at Hank. "And you were there, too, with Jean."

Hank pushed himself up to offer a hand. "Indeed, I was. Henry McCoy at your service, known also as Hank, but whom the rest of these lugs insist on insulting with the moniker 'Beast.' They let me play with their fancy electronics, though, so I forgive them."

"More like you abuse the fancy electronics," Peter said, setting aside his guitar to come forward, too. "I'm Peter Rasputin. They call me Colossus."

She blinked up at him, then grinned. "I guess so. You're even bigger than some of those Sioux boys on the rez."

"Come sit down," Henry invited, "we were just getting ready to watch Monty Python's _Life of Bryan_. Peter's going to make us popcorn."

"Peter is doing no such thing," Peter replied. "You want popcorn? Make it yourself. I'm not hungry."

"What? Our Colossus not hungry? Has the world come to an end already? And here I didn't even get to Tahiti. How depressing."

"Shut up, Beastie, or I'll find a Boy Band for you to head up. Or oops, sorry, I guess you belong in Blues Traveler. Right next to Joe Popper and his harmonica."

"So he can't model for Hugo Bass. At least he can _play_ , instead of plunk around all day performing Ancient Chinese Tuning Melody."

While the guys teased each other trying to put Dani at ease, she'd glanced back to Scott. I might have been jealous except it wasn't that kind of look. He nodded to her, once, encouragingly, and she sat down between Henry and Peter. Scott turned his attention to me. Even behind the visor, you can feel the intensity of his gaze; he doesn't need mutant power to nail a person. He'd come a step or two inside the room but remained at the top of the stairs as I walked up to join him, attracted like iron shavings to a magnet. "How are you?" he asked.

Well, at least he was speaking to me. But it wasn't a casual question. I had no idea how to reply, especially here in public company. It seemed easier to fall back on the formalities of our mission. "I'm fine. I was tired for a few days after we first got back - must have slept fourteen hours straight - but I'm fine now. You look beat, Cyclops." I used his code name deliberately.

He understood exactly why, turning away to study his charge on the couch. "It wasn't exactly an easy two weeks."

"No, I don't imagine it was. Why'd she take something as harsh as Angel Dust, anyway? Was it an accident that night?"

"No. She's been taking it, off and on, for months." He leaned into the wall and crossed arms and ankles, stuffing his feelings inside the details so they wouldn't show. "PCP isn't like anything else out there. It's a hallucinogen, depressant, _and_ stimulant. It does crazy things to the metabolism and the brain - completely unpredictable - which is why most users stay the hell away from it. But in her case, the very fact it's unique worked to short-circuit her power, shut it down, at least temporarily. As long as she maintained her high, she could keep the power off."

"But you can't stay high indefinitely."

"Exactly. As soon as the toxicity in her body dropped below a certain level, the power came back like a tidal wave."

"And now?"

"The professor blocked it off, like he did once with Jean's telepathy until she could control it. Dani will have to stay here for a while, to learn to manage her power, and for rehab purposes, too. She's not ready to go back out there. She'd fall off the wagon so fast it'd make her head spin."

"And everyone else's in her vicinity."

A grim smile was his only answer.

"Go get some sleep, Scott," I told him. "We'll keep her entertained for a while, show her around the mansion. You look like something the cat dragged in."

"Gee, thanks." But he pushed away from the wall and started to leave, hesitated and glanced back at me, then past me to the guys on the couch, with Dani between. "Jean said you're going out with Beast now." It wasn't really a question, more a plea for me to deny it. And damn Jean, but of course she'd tell him and put the worst spin on it she could.

"Henry asked me to dinner," I said. "I couldn't turn him down, so we went to dinner."

His jaw was tight, and when he spoke, it was very low but very hard. "Well, since you told me that you never lead men on, then I guess you couldn't turn him down because you decided you liked him better than me."

I didn't want to have this conversation right here, right now. "Scott ... don't. Just don't. It's not that simple. We can talk about it later."

" _Talk?_ What's to discuss? It seems fucking simple to me. What happened in Nashville was your little mistake, a blip in your good sense. So you ran to Hank to escape the beast. End of story." And he stalked out of the den.

Sighing, I turned away to find Henry watching me from his spot on the couch down below, a worried expression on his face. I wondered how good his ears were, but his worry seemed more for me, than about me. Dani was watching, too, but with a gaze more knowing. Of course, she'd seen Scott and I in Nashville, although it was hard to tell how much of that she remembered. Going over to the couch, I seated myself on the floor by Hank's feet, let him wind his fingers affectionately into my hair while I returned to my perusal of the classifieds.

And five entries down, I saw what I could scarcely credit, until I remembered it was spring, and tax time. Somebody needed some fast cash. Grinning like a maniac, I ripped out the ad, to the consternation of Hank and Peter, who leaned over to stare at me, then shoved the torn bit under Hank's nose. "Tell me I'm reading that figure right." It was a trick I'd learned long ago, to help me verify something I wasn't sure of, in a way that made no one suspicious of my illiteracy.

He took the paper from me. "1969 Mustang Fastback for eight grand? Is this a _joke_? I'm sure the damn thing doesn't run. Oh, here's the catch. It's got almost two-hundred thousand miles on it. Not that it matters. The professor isn't going to give you eight grand for an old car, Ro."

"It's not for me," I said and pushed myself up off the carpet, practically ran out the door.

I caught up to Scott down in the gym. He hadn't gone to bed, like I'd suggested. He'd gone to take out his frustrations on the punching bag. God, it wasn't fair. I shouldn't have to talk to him with his shirt off, and all sweaty like that. But I burst in, ran over to stop the bag from swinging and shove the bit of newspaper in his face. "You told me you have some money saved." He was very proud of that, in fact, I knew. "Look at this!"

He took the paper from my hand. "What?"

I pointed to the appropriate ad, since I'd ripped out three in my excitement. "There. Right there. It's even _black_ , Scott. Fate. It's meant to be yours. Only eight grand."

He stared at it a minute, then at me, and returned the paper. "Who said I want a car, Storm?" The question, and the use of my code name even here in private, brought me up short. "If I want to go somewhere, I can drive the Mercedes. Or take the bike."

"But this would be yours."

"Nothing's mine. I don't own a damn thing, not even the clothes on my back." He hit the bag, very hard, and let it swing.

" _This_ would be."

He didn't look at me, just returned to beating the life out of the bag. Punch, punch, punch. He spoke in short bursts. "I don't have that kind of money" - punch - "even if I wanted the freakin' car." Punch, punch, punch. "You're the one" - punch - "with the goddamn" - punch - "race car fixation." On the balls of his feet, he danced back from the bag, let it swing to a stop. "You're just using me to find a legal way to get your hands on it."

My instinctive reaction to that was white rage, but I clamped down on it before I could upset the local weather patterns, and pausing for control gave me time to look at this from his perspective. "That's not how I meant it," I said calmly. "I just saw the ad and remembered our conversation. At the Village Inn."

"I remember that conversation just fine. I remember a lot of things." And boy, that had layers and layers of meaning. His jaw was set hard. "Like I said, I don't have the money." He punched at the bag again, but only half-heartedly, left his arm extended, fist in contact with gray vinyl. "What I do have is for an _emergency_ , Ororo. Life is unpredictable. I'm not going to spend all my savings on a freakin' car that I don't need, even if I had that much. Which I don't."

And I was once again reminded of the great difference between us: Scott tends to cling, and I, to let go. We've neither ever had much, but it makes him desperate to keep what's in his grasp, not waste it on 'frivolous expenses.' But to me, life is all transitory, to be enjoyed while available but not to be counted on.

And wasn't that the problem here? Not just over a car-for-sale, but our entire relationship? Had I really run away in Nashville because I was mad at the professor? Or because I didn't trust that Scott would stay, and it was easier to run like a thief, and blame someone else?

"Sometimes," I said quietly, "you have to enjoy what's in your hands at the moment, not wait for something that'll likely never happen. If you're always waiting, you go through life joyless."

"Very philosophical."

"Very true."

"Maybe. But are you talking about the car? Or sex with you?"

"Both. I don't regret what happened in Nashville, Scott. Not for a minute. I was mad at the professor, not at you."

"Well maybe I do regret it and maybe I am mad at you." He still stood with arm extended, like a Greek statue. But I could see that the arm had begun to tremble, either from the strain of holding it up, or in an effort to contain more volatile emotions.

"Will you let me tell you what happened?" I asked now, as levelly and honestly as I could, not a whine or a plea for forgiveness. "And will you _listen_?" He thought that through. Scott won't agree just to agree. Finally, he nodded. "Let's go sit down," I suggested, and gestured to the weight benches shoved out of the way along one wall.

He followed me over and straddled one; I straddled the other backwards, so that we were facing each other. Casually, he rested his forearms on the black metal weight bar. It was his own rack. Three hundred twenty pounds for bench press. Not much compared to Peter, or even to Hank, but it was respectable for a man of normal strength.

Looking down at my brown hands resting on red vinyl, I didn't have to look at him, either his bare chest like body sculpture, or his face and the pain it might show. And I told him what had happened from the time he'd gone to sleep that night in Nashville, until my conversation with the professor a few days after I'd gotten back. I cried a little, but not to get his sympathy; I cried because I was sad, simply. And I ended with, "I never intended things to get this confused. But I don't regret what happened with you." I wiped the tears off my chin quickly, and still didn't look at him; he'd been completely silent throughout my explanation. "I'm glad you trusted me that much, Scott. And," I added quickly, "I'm glad I decided to trust you that much," because Scott hates to be beholden to anyone. "Whatever happens, that memory will be very special to me." Then I rubbed at my eyes. "God, that sounds like a 'Dear John' let-him-down-easy speech." I almost laughed, because it was so awful. "It's not. I mean it; I don't know what's going to happen next, with Hank. It might not last. But I like him, and I have to give him a chance."

"Yes, you do," he said, speaking for the first time. I looked up finally. His face was completely unreadable. "And it has to be an honest chance. I'm not going to compete with Hank for you. He's my friend. As far as I'm concerned, you're off limits while you're seeing him. Although," and he frowned, "we didn't, um, use any protection. I only thought of that later. So if anything should happen, I want you to know I'll be there. I wouldn't duck out on you, if you're pregnant."

I smiled because I'd have expected nothing less from Cyclops. "I know you wouldn't. But I'm on the pill." And I reached out to grip his arm, rub a thumb over the skin because I just couldn't keep my hands off of him any more. His muscles tensed under my touch. "I don't expect you to wait on me. If you decide to go out with Jean, I'll totally understand."

"Don't bring Jean into this, to yank my chain." It was harsh and cold, and he pulled away from me. I should've known better. Those two will always defend each other to any outside party, no matter how mad they might be at one another. They were, I thought with sudden insight, a lot more like siblings than potential lovers.

Now, he gripped the weight bar and leaned back, studying me from behind his visor. It struck me suddenly that he wore his visor a lot more than he really needed to, but the visor covered more of his face, let him hide his emotions more effectively. "It might be better," he said "if I stayed away from women under my command, anyway. When it doesn't work out" - I noticed that he didn't say 'if' - "things get messy."

"I don't expect you to treat me any differently, in the field." I spoke quickly.

"Good. Because I'm not going to." And he pushed to his feet, swung his leg over the bench and walked away.

"I wouldn't expect it," I called after, "whatever was going on between us. And Scott, I still don't regret it!" I saw his step hitch, just slightly. "It was the best night of my life."

"Man!" He spun to face me again and held out empty hands. "Great fucking fantastic! Trying to flatter my male pride, now?"

"No, dammit. I didn't say it was the best sex; I said it was the best night, because you trusted me." I hesitated, then pulled out the words that had been hiding underneath all the rest, handed them over to him, covered in my pride's blood. "I'm sorry I hurt you. I am so _very sorry_. That was the last thing I wanted to do, Scott."

He dropped his arms and turned his face away to hide whatever emotion he couldn't keep off of it this time. "You know, Ororo, out of this whole freaking conversation, that's the one thing I needed you to say, the one thing I was waiting for. Not explanations, not philosophy, not rationales. Just a plain apology. Too bad you ended there instead of starting there." Spinning around, he jerked the door open, left me sitting alone. I cried for a long time, in the silence.

* * *

Oddly, it was Dani Elk River who approached me later with the first hint that there might be forgiveness to be found somewhere in this mess. I was working in my little garden, the place to which I retreat when I need to get my head together by getting my hands in solid dirt. I heard her approach and squat down beside me, balancing easily on the balls of her feet. The wind off the hills blew black hair around her face. It fell past her waist in ragged wisps, and I wondered if she'd ever cut it. There was a feather braided into the back, and she wore a bone-bead choker and a black t-shirt advertizing some band called _Indigenous_. She took a cigarette out of her pack, but instead of lighting it, she split it open absently with her nail to free the tobacco into her palm. Saying something in her own tongue, she scattered the tobacco over the dirt. "What are you doing?" I asked. I didn't like cigarettes and didn't want that crap in my garden.

"Blessing the ground," she told me. "Tobacco for the spirits of the earth. Don't forget to thank them, for what grows here for you."

Demon worshiper, part of my mind thought, the part that had been raised secure in the one true faith of Islam, the part that had died under rubble along with my mother. Where had Allah been, that night?

Dani had knelt again to finger the dirt. "It's good earth, strong and black. Lots of moisture." Her voice was low for a woman, and had a lilting quality. "Can you hear my land speak to you, _matana 'exan stse_? Milk Eyes? Scott said that you command the spirits of earth and air. Do you hear our mother speak?"

"Sometimes," I replied, "maybe I do. Maybe your spirits gave me my power."

"The Creator gave you your power. Everything comes from the Creator, for good or ill."

And thus the 'demon worshiper' reminded the Muslim girl that there is no god but God. But was Muhammad his only prophet?

Heretical thought.

"Do you still have that ad, about the car?" Dani asked.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Scott's been talking about it. I thought maybe, if I left it where he could find it, he might call."

I returned to weeding while she watched. "I didn't think he wanted a car."

Dani didn't reply for a long time, didn't seem to feel a need to talk incessantly. Finally, she said, "He wants something that's his. He can't have you. So he'll take the car you like."

She was as blunt as I was, but I found myself grinning. It was so much easier when people said what they thought, not what they thought you wanted to hear. Scott was like that, too, most of the time. "He should buy the car if _he_ wants it. Not because he thinks I want it."

"Oh, he wants it. It's testosterone on wheels, ain't it?" She grinned, wicked. "He just don't think he can afford it. I talked to the professor. He says he will figure out how to make Scott take a loan, so he can buy it. Or give him the money in a way that isn't completely transparent."

"If the guy hasn't sold it already."

"Yeah. But if it's still there, I will go with Scott, to see if I can talk down the price some more. We Indians barter well." The wicked grin again. "Besides, I would like to do something nice for him." She didn't explain why, didn't need to.

I sat back and dusted off my hands. "Lets go get that ad, then." And we stood, walked back together. I could get used to having another woman around, one who didn't strike sparks off me like Jean did. "So are you going to join the team?" I asked her.

She shook her head. "Not right now. I need to go back to the rez, finish business, mend some fences, spend time with my family. I'll leave in a few weeks."

"Isn't that a little soon, to have a handle on your power?" I remembered what Scott had said, about her falling off the wagon.

She eyed me with amusement. She had a broad face, stretched wide across high cheekbones, her ink-black hair was coarse like mine, no blue sheen to it. "I will be fine, Milk Eyes. Xavier put this block in my head, to keep me from hurting anyone. That's why I took the drugs, not for the usual reasons. If I got no power, then I got no reason for drugs." She turned her face up, closed her own eyes a moment. "When I get my shit together in Montana, I'll be back."

I smiled. "Good. There's too much male posturing around this place. We need more women to whip the guys into line."

Dani laughed.

I'd set the ad on my dresser the night before, so I wouldn't lose it. Just in case. Dani took it, and the very next day, at supper, Hank told me, "Scott wants me to go look at a car with him tomorrow. A 1969 Fastback. Funny. Didn't you find an ad in the paper for just such a car, at a ridiculously good price?" He was half laughing at me

"Yeah, I seem to recall that I did. Now how did Scott get that ad?" Hank just grinned wider and I sidled a little closer, watching him put three kinds of mustard on his hotdog bun. Here we were, living in a fancy mansion with teakwood paneling and what did we eat for supper? Microwaved hotdogs. "I don't suppose I could go along?"

He shrugged. "I don't see why not. Dani's going, too, and Peter. We may as well make it a mission, at this rate."

"Jean's not going?"

Raising an eyebrow, he pushed up his glasses. "Don't start, Ro. And no, Jean's not going."

"Then count me in."

So the next afternoon, we all piled into the bed of a truck that Hank had borrowed from the ground-keeper's shed ... even Jean, in the end. Dani had insisted that we not take any of the expensive vehicles, or she'd never get the price bartered down.

The Mustang was thirty miles away, up the Hudson River on an old, run-down farm amid the new construction for expensive weekend homes of wealthy New Yorkers. Hank, Scott, and I crawled all over it, inspecting it nose to tail. It would need some serious work to the tune of several hundred dollars, starting with a new battery. But it was beautiful, all sleek and black with that distinctive, sloped rear-end and new chrome. Scott was in lust from the moment we arrived. For that matter, so was I. And I found it much easier to talk to him when we had something external on which to focus.

Dani bartered down the owner to seven grand, and Scott got his Mustang. We had to push-start it down a hill. Thank God for stick-shifts. I didn't ask how he'd scraped up the rest of the cash, since he'd refused (politely) the professor's offer of a loan. But it would be his name on the title. Peter had mentioned something that morning about Scott and pool and unnatural talent, and I had a pretty good idea. Once a thief, always a thief; once a con artist, always a con artist. Scott let me sit shotgun on the way back to the mansion, saying it was because I'd been the one to find the ad for him. But I don't think that was his real reason. He'd brought a fuzz-buster and pushed a hundred and ten along an empty stretch of highway, too fast to think, careening headlong through a green tunnel of cedar pine with blue sky arcing above. The road opened out in front of us and Lynyrd Skynyrd was playing on the radio. "Freebird."

* * *

 **Notes:** The 'flying wing' concept used for the B2 Stealth Bomber (on which the Ultimate X-Men Blackbird is modeled) was developed by John Northrop all the way back before WW II. No jest. The 1966 Corvette poster in Ro's bedroom was Dee's idea, from her story, "Property." Thanks to Dee and her Kuwaiti friend for Ororo's salty Arabic.


	5. Japan (Scott)

"You spent _how much?_ On a goddamn _dress?_ " I must have heard the figure wrong.

Ro flinched at my tone, but barreled on. "It's a Stella McCartney. VH-1 called her the designer of the year. And it's not a dress, it's a pantsuit. Do you like it?" She held it up so I could see, not that I knew shit about fashion, or could tell the colors. It looked like a long purple-red-pink jacket over a black dress to me, though I knew (because Peter had told me) that it was brilliant blue-washed raw silk, like an aurora borealis, with gold batik accents. The cut would flatter her hips. At least it wasn't that high-fashion weird crap I'd seen actors too often wear to award ceremonies.

But fifteen thousand dollars? I wasn't sure if I was more shocked that three pounds of cut cloth could command that much, or more furious that she'd spent it. "I don't give a flying fuck what VH-1 says, or if that dress - pantsuit, whatever - was designed by the goddess Venus herself. Nobody sane pays that kind of money for clothes."

"It's a designer suit, Cyke," Peter said from where he was flipping through a magazine on the suite couch. "It's a one of a kind ... of course it cost an arm and a leg. And Xavier approved."

"Fuck," I muttered and stalked off into the bathroom, slammed the door. I wasn't sure why I was so angry about it. The professor threw around money on a regular basis like it grew on trees, which for him, it may as well have, and not just because he'd inherited several hundred million. He got a sick kick out of securing donations for his private institute with a little telepathic tweak from groups especially noted for hating mutants, like the Friends of Humanity. I think even Senator Kelly had donated something as a tax write-off. I should probably laugh that Kelly had bought Ororo a fancy pantsuit, but I couldn't find it amusing, and not because I cared jack shit about Kelly, or even that Xavier was tampering with people's heads. The pantsuit bugged me for the same reason hotels like the Heritage bugged me. It was an obscene waste of money.

 _And your Mustang wasn't?_ , my conscience asked.

Not to mention that each of our uniforms had cost close to ten-thousand, when one figured in the specialized cloaking electronics which threw off Sentinels, plus communication devices and the other nifty gadgets that Hank so loved to come up with like some mutant version of James Bond's Q. But all that was to further the professor's dream.

And so was the pantsuit, albeit in a different way. This entire trip was about making a positive public impression.

And that was what had made me truly angry. I didn't belong here, regardless of my status as field leader of the X-Men. I hated this kind of smile-for-the-camera press, even while I knew it was necessary. But couldn't the professor have picked someone better equipped for social niceties?

And I was angry, too, that he'd sent Peter, Ororo, and I together. Without Hank. Or Jean. His excuse had been that Hank was still recovering, and Jean was needed to monitor him, but that was just an excuse and I knew it. He hadn't hesitated to send Hank into battle against Magneto. At least Ro was no happier than I was. Half the time in the past month since we'd returned from Nashville, I hadn't known whether I was coming or going, but I always knew the minute Ororo walked into a room, as if I'd acquired an additional sense. Once, I'd had it for Jean. Now, my eyes followed white hair, and it was a good thing my visor concealed a multitude of sins, including that of coveting my best friend's girl. But she'd been mine first.

Not that Henry knew. I think he was the only one who didn't, barring Bobby who wasn't even around. Dani knew, more or less, because she'd been there. The professor knew because he'd lifted it out of Ororo's head, and Jean had her suspicions for much the same reason. Peter knew, too, because Ro had told him, which annoyed me but I couldn't resent her for it. She'd needed to talk to someone, and knowing that Peter was gay made me a good deal more sanguine about their friendship, even if it made me less comfortable around him ... but that was my problem, not his, stemming from my previous experiences, not from anything Peter had ever done or intimated.

Now, I leaned up against the fancy marble counter and tried to get my head together, rubbed at my brow with my thumb. I could feel one of my headaches coming on, and I still had that stupid banquet yet this evening. More networking and X-Men On Display for the paparazzi.

Colossus banged on the door. "You coming out of there any time soon or do I have to go knock on the neighbor's door and ask to use their restroom?"

"Fine." I yanked the door open. "It's yours." And I tried to slip past, but Peter grabbed my arm before I could. " _What?_ " I snarled.

"Ro just left to take the pantsuit back. That's the real reason I knocked. I thought you might want to go after her and stop her."

"Why? She ought to take it back! If we're wearing our uniforms tomorrow, she should, too."

"I agree, but we have a dinner tonight and the professor expressly ordered us _not_ to wear uniforms to that. Seems the ideal venue for her new outfit, don't you think?"

"She _brought_ a fancy dress. _Two_ of them, as I recall. Either would be good enough to impress our hosts."

"Scott, she got that pantsuit today to impress _you_."

"She'll impress me more if she returns it." I didn't bother to say that I shouldn't be the man she was working so hard to impress.

He let out a snort. "You only say that because you haven't seen her in it. Now go stop her before she catches a cab."

So I found myself out at the brass elevators, cursing hotels with forty-four floors. I wasn't taking the stairs that far. By the time I got downstairs, Ro was already on the sidewalk, trying to flag down a taxi in the crazy Tokyo traffic. I could have called out her name, but instead walked up behind to catch her wrist and pull her arm down. Any excuse to touch her. "Keep the dress."

She jumped, and automatically corrected, "Pantsuit. It's a pantsuit."

"Yeah, and it was 'Rome wasn't built in day,' too. Now which one of us is being fucking anal about every little detail?"

That made her smile.

"Keep it," I said again. "I want to see you wear it." And I did. "Tomorrow, you ought to wear the uniform, but tonight, we have a banquet. The professor's making me wear a goddamn _tuxedo_. I should at least get to enjoy the scenery."

A tiny smile tugged at her mouth. "I'll wear it for you."

And then we just stood there, not quite looking at each other. I still held her wrist and she slid her hand up to clasp mine, twine our fingers, and at that moment, I didn't give a damn that we were sharing a street with several thousand Japanese and other visitors. "Let's go get something to eat," I suggested impulsively.

She gave me an amused look out from under improbable black lashes that didn't match her hair. "We're going to be eating in just a few ours. And I have this." She held up the covered hanger.

I took it out of her hand. "That's what a concierge is for, and we can get coffee instead of food."

"We can get a coffee in the hotel."

"I want to go somewhere away from here," I said, and she nodded, understanding. "Wait for me." And I took the dress back inside, had a staff person run it up to the room with a message for Peter. We'd be back in an hour or so. He could make of that whatever the hell he wanted.

She was waiting for me, arms crossed under her breasts, street wind from the funnel of high-rises whipping her white hair all around her like fine webbing. The hair, dark skin and height set her apart from milling Japanese like a wet dream of _1001 Arabian Nights_. She smiled when she saw me and held out a hand; that simple gesture sent a shiver of exhilaration through my gut and I gripped her fingers, my rationale that I didn't want to lose her in the crush of crowd. But for a while, I could pretend she was mine. Certainly the Japanese who saw us assumed it, probably because we couldn't stop grinning at each other. We'd managed to escape our keepers, and walked at random down busy streets, wound up at one of the ubiquitous Tokyo Starbucks.

The shop was small and bursting with people so that Ororo's back was pushed up against my front while we stood in line. Without thinking, I put my arms around her shoulders, which was an astonishingly stupid idea, but she laid her own arms over mine and we didn't say a word, didn't even look at each other because if we did, we'd have to acknowledge that this wasn't right. As long as we didn't speak, this could be a private, shared fantasy, and Hank didn't have to know.

Finally, we were forced to move forward and separate. I covered our discomfiture by making her read me the menu. In the twelve days I'd spent watching over Dani, I'd wasted some hours on the Internet, looking for pointers on how to teach remedial reading and writing to adults, and since I'd bought the Mustang, Ro and I had met at night in the privacy of her attic retreat for me to tutor her where no one else could know. It'd been a test of our self-restraint, but teaching her to read was genuinely all we'd done. Behaving was easier when we shared a roof with Hank. Being half a world away made temptation too strong.

She got coffee and I got hot chocolate with whipped cream, then we found a spot in a corner at the window bar. The bar was nearly the only seating in the place, and had but one free stool; I let her take it, and leaned into the counter beside her. We watched the crowds swarm past beyond glass. Twenty-seven million people going about their lives, each with his own loves and hates and secret desires. I wondered how many were mutants?

"Do you ever look at people," she asked softly in my ear, "and try to guess who else is like you?" As if she'd followed my thoughts. Jean reads my mind, but Ro understands it.

"Sometimes," I whispered back.

"I'll miss Dani," she said after a minute, blowing on her coffee to cool it. By the time we returned from Japan, Dani would be back in Montana. I still wasn't happy about that. I'd told the girl I was going to call her once a week. She'd told me I was an over-protective worrywart. I probably was, but I was still going to call her. "It was nice to have another woman around," Ro added.

"There's Jean," I said.

She just glared at me, and I couldn't quite kill the smirk behind a sip of chocolate. I shouldn't bait her, especially since I found their mutual antipathy more annoying than amusing. Jean and I had slipped back into our comfortable familiarity. She was like the old red sweatshirt I'd had since the orphanage; I put her on when I needed to feel safe. I just didn't need to know where she was all the time any more, didn't haunt her hallway, or try to finagle seats at supper so that I sat next to her. And Ro had been right about her. Now, Jean always left a seat for me at her side. Often I took it. Sometimes I didn't. But I wasn't sure that I was completely over her, even if I was fairly sure that I didn't love her. The real question was whether I loved Ororo, or was she just my newest obsession? Would I recognize love if I felt it, or did someone have to hurt me to get my attention?

Now, Ororo nudged me with an elbow. "Come on, you'll miss Dani, too. Admit it."

"Who said I was denying it? Who'll do a dance to make my car go now?"

Ro burst out laughing. She, Hank, Dani and I had been working on the Mustang in the garage once, trying to get the carburetor timed right so it'd quit skipping and chugging after I'd turned the engine off. But we'd had little luck, and Hank and I had become progressively more irritated with each other until I'd made some crack about needing magic instead of ape-man the mechanic. Dani had run over to dip her fingers in some grease, then smear a line across her cheekbones and nose, three on forehead and chin, and had proceeded to dance around the car in native fashion, chanting, "Hey ya-hey-ya, ya-hey, hey-o."

Finally, Hank had asked, "Is this little performance supposed to accomplish something, or are you trying to make it rain in the garage so we'll pack up and go inside?"

Dani had stopped to grin like an imp. "It's not a rain dance. It's a make-the-car-go dance."

And I'd started to laugh at the sight of Dani with my car grease all over her face, dancing me out of my funk. Ororo and Hank had laughed to see me laugh like that, and pretty soon we were all four just howling.

And that pretty much summed up Dani's place on the team. For a girl who made one's worst nightmares real, she had a talent for keeping the peace.

Now, Ro sighed. "So we lose our jester and get back a Wolverine. Not much of a trade."

"Don't remind me," I muttered. "Too bad Bobby didn't return before she left. He'd like her."

" _Bobby?_ Why, Scott, you're a closet romantic. And Dani's a year older than Bobby." Neither of us remarked on the fact that a year couldn't begin to cover the vast difference in their experiences. It was hard for me to believe that Dani was barely sixteen.

"So?" I said now. "You're a year older than me."

"Well, yeah, but you're eighteen going on thirty. And I don't think it's a whole year anyway. When's your birthday?"

"Day after tomorrow."

She spit coffee out her nose all over the glass. " _What?_ "

I shrugged. "I think it's my birthday anyway, but everything before the accident is so muddled, I'm not sure. Maybe it was my brother's birthday."

"You have a brother?"

"Had." I frowned down at my mug. "He's dead, too. They told me, at the orphanage, that I have no living relatives."

"So who else knows it's your birthday?"

"The professor. Jean."

She studied my profile. "So you get to do Japanese national television as a birthday present."

"Whoopee."

That made her smile, and she finished her coffee in a single swallow. "Let's go back. We need to get ready for tonight."

"How long does it take you to get ready? The banquet doesn't start for another four hours. Even you can't spend that long in the bathroom, Ororo."

"I need to wash my hair and it'll easily take those four hours to dry."

" _Four hours_ to dry your hair?" But I finished my hot chocolate and followed her out.

"Pitfall of long hair," she called over her shoulder as she pushed the door open. "And no I'm not going to cut it off, even if it's not very practical in a fight."

"I'd never suggest such a thing." I joined her on the sidewalk. "In fact, I wouldn't speak to you for a month if you cut it."

"What? You don't think I'd look good with a punk mohawk?"

"Don't you dare!" I tugged at the hair in question but she pulled free, then reached down to find my hand again, lace her fingers with mine and we took the long way back to the hotel. She let me go when we were in sight of it. "Jilah," I said - the first time I'd dared to use that name since Nashville, but she stopped me with a finger on my lips.

"Don't." she said, and we went up so she could wash her hair. 

* * *

"Relax, Cyclops."

"I'm not uptight," I lied.

Peter rolled his eyes, then held up his bottle. Sam Adams. "You sure you don't want a beer?"

"I don't drink." I'd been clean almost two years. I wasn't wrecking it now because I felt stupid in a tuxedo. I liked my life. "And you shouldn't be drinking, either. You're not twenty-one yet."

"I'm Russian. My blood's fifty percent vodka. And just what'd you share with the professor on the deck when you got back from the Savage Land, if that wasn't a bottle of bubbly?"

"I had three sips." And I probably shouldn't have taken those, but I hadn't wanted to insult him, had wondered if it was some kind of test. "I don't want a beer," I reiterated and sipped my iced tea, studied the room full of people, most of whom were at least four or five inches shorter than me. Poor Peter stood out like the Eiffel Tower. Not that he cared; he was in his element chatting up the Japanese, and had come to join me lurking in corners, trying to disappear into the wine wallpaper (at least, it was wine to me), only to lure me out there with him.

"Where's Storm?" he asked now.

I nodded towards the dance floor.

" _Still?_ "

I shrugged. She'd made a bee-line for it as soon as she'd seen it, without even pausing at the buffet tables to eat. Colossus and I had been left to make polite small-talk until I'd found a way to extricate myself and leave him to bask in the attention. On the dance floor, Storm, too, had enjoyed a steady stream of admirers. That didn't bother me at all. It gave me an excuse to watch her move in that dress. Pantsuit. Whatever. It wasn't worth fifteen thousand dollars, but it was worth something. It led the eye on a path from the line of shoulder over the swell of breast across the hollow of stomach to the curve of hip. Her body in black played peek-a-boo through artful slits in raw blue silk that hung almost to her ankles, more like a cape than a jacket, and her unbound hair curled down her back like a waterfall. Our African Rapunzel. Half the men there - maybe more than half - wanted to be her prince and scale it. But I was the only one who'd been covered by it, slept in it, breathed it. She'd eventually get tired of her tower prison and climb down to me, then I'd sleep in it again.

Funny, that I could be so certain of that, but I was. Once I'd gotten past the anger, and the confusion, I'd understood exactly why Ororo would doubt herself and bolt like an antelope the minute she'd realized that Xavier had set us up. The whole thing bothered me less only because I knew the professor better. I had my suspicions that my choice to join Magneto in the Savage Land hadn't been entirely my own. I'd been the perfect double-agent because I hadn't thought I was one. But the professor had told Ororo the truth about the matter of Nashville. Our little love affair was too small in the grand scheme of things for him to invest a concentrated effort. He'd thrown us together in a car because he'd known us both well enough - advantage of telepathy - to have a pretty good idea of what would happen if we were left alone together for a few days. The situation had been arranged, but the _feelings_ were real. I might not be entirely sure what name to hang on those feelings, but they were real, and they were mutual, and for the first time in my life, I felt confident that someone wanted me purely for myself.

And for that, I could almost forgive Xavier for sending me to Magneto.

"Are you really going to stand here all night?" Peter asked me now.

"I will if I can get away with it," I replied.

I hadn't moved my eyes from Ororo, but in my peripheral vision, I could see him shake his head. "I'm going back out, to talk to people. Like we're supposed to do."

"Be my guest."

He took about five steps, then turned to say, "Why don't you just go ask her dance?"

"Because I don't dance. I'm happy to watch."

"Don't drink, don't dance ... God, you're as bad as a Baptist."

"I play cards at least. Want to try a game of poker, when we get back to the hotel?"

"Forget it, Cyclops. I've heard about your talent for calculating probabilities in your head. I also watched you make five-thousand dollars at four pool halls in seven hours. I am not an idiot."

I finally turned away from watching Ororo, and grinned at him. "I never said you were. And Peter, thanks for that night."

He shrugged. "Playing bodyguard for you while you cleaned up at pool was a lot more fun than selling illegal arms to Hammas fanatics." And he headed back out to mingle with the Japanese.

When I returned my attention to the dance floor, Ororo was gone, which made me straighten up and scan the room for her. Molded-glass flute-light chandeliers glowed down on the white lines of banquet tables burdened with industrial, covered steel bain-maries. Servers stood guard over these while people flitted everywhere, social butterflies trying to see and be seen. Finally, I caught sight of Ro weaving her way towards me. She had to pause every ten steps to answer questions or shake hands. Her smile was about as genuine as a used-car dealer's.

When she reached my side, she caught my hand in hers and tugged me out towards the floor. "What are you doing?" I asked, digging in my heels.

She quit tugging, said softly, "Stop staring at me like you're starving and I'm fillet mignon; come dance with me instead."

"I'm doing no such thing."

"It's a slow song, Scott." And it was; "The Flame" by Cheap Trick. "Dancing slow isn't hard."

"I don't dance."

"Sure you can."

"Ororo! I don't dance!"

People nearby were watching us now, some amused, some curious, some speculative. A few paparazzi took our picture. God knew what absurdity the trash mags would spin out of the two of us apparently quarreling at a banquet. I didn't want to cause a scene, and dammit, Ororo knew that, was counting on it. "I'll teach you," she said in a low voice. "You're teaching me to read, I'll teach you to dance."

Sighing, I let her lead me out to the floor. People made space for us. I hated it, to be the center of attention like this, to have others stare at me. It dredged up memories of dancing for the pleasure of strangers, or doing other things while they got off, watching me.

"Put your arm around my waist like this," she whispered, calling me back to the present as she positioned my arm where it should go.

I beat her to the punch with the rest, caught her free hand in mine. "I know how to dance, Ro."

"I thought you said you didn't?"

"I said I _didn't_ dance. I didn't say I didn't know _how_. I have a basic idea. But if I step on your feet, I'm not apologizing. You dragged me out here."

She just smiled and tilted her hips forward against mine, distracting me thoroughly, the little minx. Then she shifted away again and began to move, like liquid in my arms, her eyes on my face. I had a much harder time, too conscious of the crowd. "Relax," she whispered into my ear.

"There are people watching!"

"Forget the people."

"I can't forget the people!"

"Forget the people, Scott. Close your eyes."

"No way. I'll bump into someone."

"No, you won't; I'll keep you from doing that. Close your eyes and feel my body move. Feel the music in the floor, let it run up through the soles of your feet and into your bones."

I shut my eyes as she ordered and let my other senses reach out. Touch. The silk of her jacket was cool and smooth under the pads of my fingers, her hair warm over the backs of my hands. Smell. The air was dry, and I could pick up spicy traces of leftover chicken curry, and the sweat of too many people at too close a proximity in uncomfortable clothing. Sound. The slow pulse-pound of the song's base line thudded through me.

 _I wanna run to you, I wanna call,_  
 _But I've been hit by lightning._  
 _Just can't stand up for fallin' apart._  
 _Can't see through this veil across my heart, over you_  
 _You'll always be the one._  
 _You were the first, you'll be the last . . . ._

Ro's palm trailed down from my shoulder to rest against the center of my chest. Her voice was hypnotic, rich with a trace of accent, and her breath puffed against my earlobe. "Feel how the music settles here where my hand is - the beat like a heartbeat. Slow and steady. Thump, thump, tha-dump." She patted it out in time against my sternum. "Feel it from your toes to the tips of your fingers, breathe with it. Let it pull you inside out. The music is everything. The music is blood. The music is sex. The music is food. The music is life. Everything. It's all that exists, as deep as the earth, as eternal as the desert. Feel it move through your veins and shiver your belly. Let it take your body where it wants you to go."

 _I'm going crazy, I'm losing sleep._  
 _I'm in too far, I'm in way too deep over you._

And I was doing it. I was dancing. She'd laid her head against my shoulder so she could speak into my ear as we moved to the music. "See?" she asked. "When you let in the music, you can feel your way into living, Cyclops."

* * *

 **Notes:** Events here take place in Japan, on the eve of the scenes in issue #7. In the classic comics, Ororo's room was in the attic. I'm well aware that Dani's personality is less serious here than in the original comics, but the personalities of all Ultimate characters are different and I just imbued her with a bit of Indi'n humor. As for Storm and Cyclops, take a look at the panels during the autograph signing in issue #7; notice how they keep track of one another in the crowd (verbal exchange or no), and that they only ever call each other by first name in this issue. No idea if that was intentional or accidental, but I love it when the comic neatly dove-tales with something I'm working on. Serendipity.


End file.
